Formulation of the inverse problem of calculating the optical surface for an illuminating beam with a plane wavefront as the Monge–Kantorovich problem

Abstract

A problem of calculating a refractive surface that forms a required irradiance distribution in the far field in the case of a plane illuminating beam is considered. We show that this problem can be formulated as a mass transportation problem. The specific form of the cost function for this problem is obtained. It is shown that with a certain choice of coordinates, the cost function becomes quadratic. The resulting mass transportation problem also describes a problem of calculating a mirror, which can be considered as a special case of the problem of calculating a refractive surface.

Keywords

• geometrical optics
• optical design
• nonimaging optics
• illumination design
• monge-kantorovich problem
• mass transportation problem