I wonder if there is a way to create a Merit Function to match your current optical design, in terms of spherical aberration, defocus, EFL, wavefront errors, etc.
So instead of creating a MF to achieve certain optical quality, it is done backwards:
you create a design and once you have it, you create a MF that will matches that optical quality everytime, even if you change some characteristics of your design (thicknes, glass, etc).
Maybe I’m a bit loss with this, as it could be impossible, but any kind of help will be appreciated!
I believe that you have outlined in your question how you would achieve the goal of reproducing optical performance for your system while being agnostic to its architecture.
If, for example, the performance characteristics that are important to you are, focal length (EFFL), chromatic performance (AXCL, and LACL), and certain wavefront performance that could be characterized by a Zernike decomposition (ZERN), you could populate your merit function with these operands, sample the wavefront over the specified field, and optimize. The optimized values of the operands would become the new target values. This would set the merit function value to 0 thus creating a minimum in the design space. Then you could make changes to your design (such as glass type, number of elements, etc) and reoptimize to try and restore the nominal performance.
I believe that you have outlined in your question how you would achieve the goal of reproducing optical performance for your system while being agnostic to its architecture.
If, for example, the performance characteristics that are important to you are, focal length (EFFL), chromatic performance (AXCL, and LACL), and certain wavefront performance that could be characterized by a Zernike decomposition (ZERN), you could populate your merit function with these operands, sample the wavefront over the specified field, and optimize. The optimized values of the operands would become the new target values. This would set the merit function value to 0 thus creating a minimum in the design space. Then you could make changes to your design (such as glass type, number of elements, etc) and reoptimize to try and restore the nominal performance.
You are completely right, the solution was in front of me, and I couldn´t see it.
I was thinking about this kind of approach for those moments when you work with an already made design, that you want/need to modify, adapting it to your specifications or requirements.
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