Design of Cost Effective Infrared Imaging Lenses

Level: Introductory Length: 4 hours Format: In-Person Lecture Intended Audience: Optical designers, engineers, technologists, material developers, scientists, technicians, or managers who wish to learn more about physical constraints and limits of actual lens materials in infrared optics. Description: This course explains methods of infrared optical design to find cost optimized lens arrangements for modern Focal Plane Arrays (FPA). A primary goal of the course is to reveal the logic, systematic order, opportunities and practical constraints in the lens design process. Examples are taken from very fast lenses for uncooled FPA’s in the long wave infrared waveband up to medium fast lenses for cooled FPA’s in the medium wave infrared waveband. How find solutions for different Fields Of View (FOV) requirements from extreme narrow field up to extreme wide field (Horizontal FOV<90o)? Provided examples have maximal two separate lenses. Learning Outcomes: This course will enable you to: - quantify the impact of the lens arrangement on thermal and spatial resolution inside an IR-imaging device - find a systematic order for infrared imaging lenses - explain an effective use of aspheres and diffractive - search for limits of singlet designs - design fast doublet having a medium field - study the impact of material choice on narrow field LWIR-doublets 50mm f/1.3 - apply principles of passive athermalization: Mechanical, Optical, and Combined - quantify the impact of fabrication tolerances: applied for mentioned 80mm f/1.2 lenses - handle contradicting trends in wide field designs Instructor(s): Norbert Schuster worked 1973-95 at several Universities (Germany, Algeria) as professor for Technical Optics and Infrared Technology, and from 1995-2016 as optical designer, developer, and manager in several optical companies in Germany, Belgium, and France. Since 2017, he has this own company SUSTAR-OPTICS in Heilbronn (Germany). He presented more than 50 scientific papers and holds several patents. In the year 2000, he published the first German textbook “Infrarotthermographie”. He earned a Ph.D. in Technical Optics at the Technical University of Leningrad (1976) and a D.Sc. in Optical Sciences at the University of Technology Ilmenau (1990). Dr. Schuster is a Member of both the DGaO and SPIE. Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing 2017 Course Held: 10 April 2017