Chirped arrays of refractive ellipsoidal microlenses for aberration correction under oblique incidence

Improvements of the resolution homogeneity of an ultra-thin artificial apposition compound eye objective are accomplished by the use of a chirped array of ellipsoidal micro-lenses. The array contains 130x130 individually shaped ellipsoidal lenses for channel-wise correction of astigmastism and field curvature occurring under oblique incidence. We present an analytical approach for designing anamorphic micro-lenses for such purpose based on Gullstrand's equations and experimentally validate the improvement. Considerations for the design of the photolithographical masks for the micro-lens array fabrication by melting of photoresist cylinders with ellipsoidal basis are presented. Measurements of the optically performance are proceed on first realized artificial compound eye prototypes showing a significant improvement of angular resolution homogeneity over the complete field of view of 64.3 degrees. (c) 2005 Optical Society of America.