Off-axis Two-mirror System with Wide Field of View Based on Diffractive Mirror

An unobstructed off-axis two-mirror system is presented in this paper. First a suitable initial configuration is established based on third-order aberration theory. In order to achieve a wide field of view (FOV) with high image quality , the diffractive mirror is adopted in the two-mirror system to increase the optimization freedom and the aberration relationship between diffractive phase coefficients and Zernike coefficients is derived. Furthermore, a complete comparison design example with a focal length of 1200 mm, F-number of 12, and FOV of 40° × 2° is given to verify the aberration correction ability of the diffractive mirror. The system average wavefront error is 0.007 λ (λ=0.6328 μm) developed from 0.061 λ when the system didn’t adopt the diffractive mirror. In this system the phase modulation function of the diffractive mirror is established as an even function of x, so we could obtain a symmetrical imaging quality about the tangential plane, and the symmetric aberration performance also brings considerable convenience to alignment and testing for the system.