title: Design of a spherical focal surface using close-packed relay optics.
abstract: This paper presents a design strategy for close-packing circular finite-conjugate optics to create a spherical focal surface. Efficient packing of circles on a sphere is commonly referred to as the Tammes problem and various methods for packing optimization have been investigated, such as iterative point-repulsion simulations. The method for generating the circle distributions proposed here is based on a distorted icosahedral geodesic. This has the advantages of high degrees of symmetry, minimized variations in circle separations, and computationally inexpensive generation of configurations with N circles, where N is the number of vertices on the geodesic. These properties are especially beneficial for making a continuous focal surface and results show that circle packing densities near steady-state maximum values found with other methods can be achieved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA.
authors.forename: Hui S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Son
authors.forename: Daniel L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Marks
authors.forename: Joonku
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hahn
authors.forename: Jungsang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: David J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Brady