Services

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This involves assessment of all top level requirements for an imaging or photonic product. No lens design or detector selection can occur until system requirements are determined and considered as they cross product disciplines. For instance, optics, mechanics, and electronics must share a weight budget. MTF allowances for optical assemblies, detectors, and dynamic disturbances are considered such that when combined, the system level resolution will be met. These efforts require communication and organized documentation. 

At this stage, basic optical parameters, such as focal length, field of view, and an imaging metric (such as wavefront error) are specified for the optical system. A rough optical system can now be 

designed to serve as a reference for further development. Sub-allocations for weight, physical space, optical surface form, and alignment can be divided up among the optics. These exercises require communication and iteration, as well as understanding of compensators and probability. 

Jennifer has designed lenses and optical systems, including custom test instruments. During the design process, the following parameters are monitored:  magnification/focal length,  field of view, spectral transmission, glass types, mirror and AR coatings, 3rd and 5th order aberrations, midspatial frequencies, distortion, ghost images, manufacturability, alignment sensitivities,  compensators, focus budget, assembly methods, weight, and space envelope. Finally, your image quality metric. 

  Too often, stray light control is not addressed until after the system is assembled and stray light issues become apparent. Ship dates are looming, and now there’s a big problem. Proactively involving a stray light analyst during the detailed optical design phase allows for the design of baffles, filters, or surface treatments. 

Jennifer has a comprehensive understanding of optical component fabrication techniques, methods used to measure parameters (such as radius, irregularity, center thickness, and wedge), and can advise lens designers in such areas. As such, she can create component drawings that contain all the necessary specifications for an optical component manufacturer. She is a proponent of the use of ISO 10110 for preparation of drawings. See 2017 webinar 12 Tips to Reduce Cost: (www.zemax.com/resources/webinars ). 

Jennifer is uniquely talented in written documentation. She has written technical reports, tutorials, assembly procedures, measurement procedures, articles, research papers, instrument selection tables, conference presentations, error budget trees, and more. A few examples include measurement uncertainty analyses for product certification, understanding surface versus wavefront, how to specify aberrations on lens drawings, wavefront error budget trees, and measuring CT with the Bridger TMS.