The Lissajous lens: a three-dimensional absolute optical instrument without spherical symmetry

We propose a three dimensional optical instrument with an isotropic gradient index in which all ray trajectories form Lissajous curves. The lens represents the first absolute optical instrument discovered to exist without spherical symmetry (other than trivial cases such as the plane mirror or confo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2015-03, Vol.23 (5), p.5716-5722
Main Authors: Danner, Aaron J, Dao, H L, Tyc, Tomáš
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We propose a three dimensional optical instrument with an isotropic gradient index in which all ray trajectories form Lissajous curves. The lens represents the first absolute optical instrument discovered to exist without spherical symmetry (other than trivial cases such as the plane mirror or conformal maps of spherically-symmetric lenses). An important property of this lens is that a three-dimensional region of space can be imaged stigmatically with no aberrations, with a point and its image not necessarily lying on a straight line with the lens center as in all other absolute optical instruments. In addition, rays in the Lissajous lens are not confined to planes. The lens can optionally be designed such that no rays except those along coordinate axes form closed trajectories, and conformal maps of the Lissajous lens form a rich new class of optical instruments.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.23.005716