High-harmonic diffractive lens color compensation

Large diameter, high-harmonic diffractive lenses could find applications in future space telescopes. Residual chromatic aberrations from these lenses can cause significant blurring. Solutions to reduce chromatic dispersion and other aberrations to diffraction-limited performance are discussed. A design example based on a 240-mm-diameter, 1-m focal length multi-order diffractive engineered lens operating over the astronomical R-Band (589-727 nm) is presented. The design example uses a relay subsystem with four times smaller diameter than the primary. This color corrector includes both refractive and diffractive optical elements and reduces the longitudinal chromatic aberrations by more than a factor of 30 compared to the primary lens alone, while maintaining the effective focal length and numerical aperture of the system. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

The article discusses the potential applications of large diameter, high-harmonic diffractive lenses in future space telescopes, as well as solutions to reduce chromatic dispersion and other aberrations to achieve diffraction-limited performance. By using a relay subsystem and a color corrector with refractive and diffractive optical elements, longitudinal chromatic aberrations can be significantly reduced while maintaining the effective focal length and numerical aperture of the system.