Fast Focusing Aspheric Mirrors & Lenses

In addition benefiting from a uniquely stable manufacturing environment the company is routinely able to produces highly aspheric, fast focusing (to f 0.7) on-axis parabolic mirrors.

With its team of skilled technicians and engineers, Optical Surfaces Ltd is also able to fabricate high performance aspheric lenses with tight tolerances. Excellent performance is assured through production of aspheric lenses with excellent surface quality - low surface scatter (20-10 scratch-dig) and high surface accuracy (lambda/20).

The requirement for aspheric mirrors and lenses is particularly prevalent in space-borne optical systems, astronomical telescopes and the next generation of very high power laser systems. Driven by the high cost of launching payloads into space – considerable demands are placed upon reducing the size and weight of optical systems. Many of the designs for the new generation of astronomical telescopes use a segmented spherical primary mirror coupled with highly aspheric mirrors in order to compensate for the primary spherical aberration. To achieve the highest laser power densities - fusion researchers require the highest achievable optical throughput combined with pinpoint focusing capabilities. The realisation of these optics, due to the required large aspherisation, is a real technical challenge for optical manufacturing.

The complex surface profile of aspheres offers excellent correction of spherical aberration and reduce other optical aberrations compared to a simple lens or mirror. A single aspheric lens or mirror can often replace a much more complex multi-element system. The resulting device is smaller and lighter, and sometimes cheaper than the multi-element design. On-axis parabolic mirrors produce collimated reflected light and are used in applications that require very fast focusing and high energy densities. Off-axis parabolic mirrors provide an unobstructed aperture allowing complete access to the focal region as well as reducing the size and minimising the weight of a design. They are especially suitable for broadband or multiple wavelength applications due to their completely achromatic performance.

Optical Surfaces ISO 9001-2000 approved manufacturing facility provides the flexible resources to supply from single specialist requirements to OEM quantities. Benefiting from its stable environment, quality testing becomes quantifiable and reliable. All toroidal mirrors are provided with a complete quality test assurance report.