Opt Express. 2016 Mar 21;24(6):6619-43. doi: 10.1364/OE.24.006619.

Multi-objective approach for the automatic design of optical systems.

Optics express

Bráulio Fonseca Carneiro de Albuquerque, Fabiano Luis de Sousa, Amauri Silva Montes

PMID: 27136851 DOI: 10.1364/OE.24.006619

Abstract

An innovative method for the automatic design of optical systems is presented and verified. The proposed method is based on a multi-objective evolutionary memetic optimization algorithm. The multi-objective approach simultaneously, but separately, addresses the image quality, tolerance, and complexity of the system. The memetic technique breaks down the search for optical designs in to three different parts or phases: optical glass selection, exploration, and exploitation. The optical glass selection phase defines the most appropriate set of glasses for the system under design. The glass selection phase limits the available glasses from hundreds to just a few, drastically reducing the design space and significantly increasing the efficiency of the automatic design method. The exploration phase is based on an evolutionary algorithm (EA), more specifically, on a problem-tailored generalized extremal optimization (GEO) algorithm, named Optical GEO (O-GEO). The new EA incorporates many features customized for lens design, such as optical system codification and diversity operators. The trade-off systems found in the exploration phase are refined by a local search, based on the damped least square method in the exploitation phase. As a result, the method returns a set of trade-off solutions, generating a Pareto front. Our method delivers alternative and useful insights for the compromise solutions in a lens design problem. The efficiency of the proposed method is verified through real-world examples, showing excellent results for the tested problems.

Publication Types

• Journal Article