Measurement and correction of two-sided freeform optical elements with combined tactile-optical metrology equipment

Abstract

Freeform optical elements are state of the art for several years to fabricate very high performance optical systems with the necessity of, e.g., strong folding in mirror system or correction of typical asymmetric aberrations in mirror systems as well as lens systems. For freeform mirror systems, in particular for metal mirrors, the metrology is well understood and iterative process chains are well established. For transmission elements with a freeform surface on both sides, manufacturing, metrology, and correction for both sides in a parallel manner is quite difficult. The article presents a method to measure such an optical element and correct it with a well-defined correction step to have both sides in a well-defined position to each other.