Conical mirrors?

  • 7 August 2020
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I'm trying to create a pair of conical mirrors, one outward-reflecting and one inward reflecting, to create a hollow beam, much as you might with an axicon, but in a shorter space. The idea is the same as marked 'mirror assembly' in the reflected dark-field microscope cube shown below. I've been looking for a way to do this in sequential mode, but haven't found it yet. Doesn't seem to like specifying an axicon surace as a mirror. Can anyone suggest a way to do this please? Thanks.



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Userlevel 7
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Hey James,


One key thing to remember is that in sequential mode the chief ray must be traceable. Assuming it is, the Axicon should work fine in sequential mode, using the Odd Asphere or the Standard surface to define it. My favorite is to use the Standard surface, for the reasons given here:



If the chief ray is not traceable, you'll need to use non-sequential ray tracing as there are no magic rays in non-sequential mode. Sequential mode uses the chief and marginal rays to define the system parameters and won't work if the chief ray cannot be traced. Well, actually purely geometric things like Spot and Image Analysis will work, but nothing that is chief-ray-referenced will be able to work without the chief ray.

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