The Effect of Detector-Pixel Size on the Optical Centroid Efficiency of Infrared Sensors with Spherical Aberration

Abstract

Optical centroid efficiency (OCE) is the traditional enclosed energy by the square detector pixel (the energy on detector (EOD)) averaged over all misalignments between the optical system and the pixel center. We examine the relationship between the OCE and the EOD for two different pixel sizes, with one larger than the diameter of the Airy disc and the other smaller than three diameters of the Airy disc. We observed that the relationships could, in general, be described as having a U shape, with the OCE being proportional to the EOD for small amounts of aberrations and inversely proportional for large amounts. For the letter cases, the energy is distributed over several pixels.

Keywords

• energy-on-square detector
• <i>EOD</i>
• optical centroid efficiency
• <i>OCE</i>
• infrared
• sensor