Novel Ideal Nonimaging Designs by Multichanneling the Phase-Space Flow

Abstract

New ultra-thin optical designs are presented. They are formed by optical sections (called channels) working in parallel (multichanneling) to provide the desired optical function. The phase-space representation of the bundle of rays going from the source to the target is discontinuous between channels. This phase-space ray-bundle flow is divided in as many branches as channels there are but it is a single trunk at the source and at the target. Typically, these multichannel devices are at least formed by three optical surfaces: two of them have discontinuities (in the shape or in the shape derivative) while the last one is smooth. The discontinuities of the optical surfaces are causing the separation of the flow in branches (in the phase space). The number of discontinuities is the same in the two first surfaces: Each channel is defined by the smooth surfaces in between discontinuities, so the surfaces forming each separate channel are all smooth. No diffractive analysis is done