A thin film liquid crystal based compensator for the chromatic aberration of optical lenses

ABSTRACT

A key factor in the design of refractive lenses is to control their chromatic aberration. A large number of designs aimed at correcting the chromatic aberration of a single lens, require use of a doublet consisting of two glass lenses with different material properties and shape. In this article we suggest a new design to correct the chromatic aberration of a glass lens, with an inexpensive thin film coating. In our proposed focusing system, a Panchartnam lens (that is a passive thin film coating) is used to correct the chromatic aberration of a glass lens. While requiring polarized light, the approach will be useful for many applications including Virtual Reality displays.

KEYWORDS:

• Achromatic lens
• liquid crystal lens
• Pancharatnam lens

Additional information

Funding

We express thanks for financial support from the Army Research Office (Agreement # W911NF-14-1-0650).