A 40-deg full field-of-view high-performance eyepiece design utilizing a polymer spherical gradient-index (GRIN) optical element is presented. In the design process, the GRIN lens material is constrained to current manufacturing capabilities. Several spherical GRIN lens blanks are fabricated from a thermoformable axial GRIN polymethyl methacrylate polystyrene copolymer material. One is diamond turned into a lens for the eyepiece, and the additional blanks are used to characterize the fabrication process. The spherical GRIN profile is evaluated in the original design, and a tolerance analysis is provided.
An all-plastic high-performance eyepiece design utilizing a polymer spherical gradient-index optical element is presented. The use of a gradient-index lens in the eyepiece offers better off-axis and chromatic aberration correction, as well as overall performance improvement compared to a similar eyepiece with all homogeneous lenses.
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