A least-squares method for the design of two-reflector optical systems

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a method for the design of two-reflector optical systems that transfer a given energy density of the source to a desired energy density at the target. It is known that the two-reflector design problem gives rise to a Monge–Ampère (MA) equation with transport boundary condition. We solve this boundary value problem using a recently developed least-squares algorithm (Prins et al 2015 J. Sci. Comput. 37 B937–61). It is one of the few numerical algorithms capable to solve these type of problems efficiently. The least-squares algorithm can provide two solutions of the MA problem, one is concave and the other one is convex. The reflectors are validated for several numerical examples by a ray-tracer based on Monte-Carlo simulation.