Solving tolerancing and three-dimensional beam shaping problems by multifunctional wave optical design

A strategy for designing optical systems that are optimized for multiple optical functions on the basis of wave optics is presented. Each optical function is composed of an input field, a set of fixed system pa- rameters, and a merit function. A design algorithm is proposed that is applicable for optical systems consisting of a transmission operator fol- lowed by an arbitrary linear operator. The goal is to find the transmission operator, which is optimal for all optical functions simultaneously. In later design steps, this transmission operator can be transformed to real op- tical elements, for instance, by using the thin element approximation. It is shown that the algorithm is efficiently applicable by investigating two sample applications for multifunctional wave optical design: the design of tolerant systems and 3-D beam shaping.