10/17/2023
By Lynne Schaufenbil

The Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology is pleased to announce that this week’s seminar will be presented by Derek Kopon from MIT Lincoln Laboratory on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 1 p.m. in conference room WAN305. 

Please RSVP to Lynne_Schaufenbil@uml.edu by Wednesday, Oct. 18 COB if you are interested in attending.

Title: Freeform Optical Systems with NURBS Surfaces

Abstract:
Recent advances in the design, manufacture, and metrology of freeform optical surfaces have led to their proliferation in numerous optical systems. These surfaces provide improved image quality, larger fields of view, and decreased size, weight, and power (SWaP) for current and planned astronomical space missions. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has pioneered the design, fabrication, and system prototyping of NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational Basis Spline) freeform optical surfaces for use in imaging systems. Our proprietary optical design software FANO (Fast Accurate NURBS Optimizer) takes an initial non-freeform design file generated from a Zemax model and optimizes the optical surfaces and system geometry to reduce spot size over the field of view. The FANO design code uses a fast raytrace engine designed for NURBS surfaces, with numerical accuracy for large numbers of variables and rays, achieving truly remarkable fields of view and performance. This talk will give an overview of NURBS freeform technology development at MIT LL and a description of systems we have built to date.

Bio:
Derek Kopon is a member of the technical staff in the Optical Engineering Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Prior to joining Lincoln, Derek was the instrument scientist and optical lead for the Active optics Guiding and Wavefront Sensing system (AGWS), a major subsystem of the Giant Magellan Telescope being built by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Derek received his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 2012 from the University of Arizona and holds Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Engineering Physics from Cornell University. Prior to his work on the Giant Magellan telescope, Derek worked as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany on multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) with the LINC-NIRVANA instrument and as an optical systems engineer at L3-SSG-Tinsley. 

This material is based upon work supported by the Department of the Air Force under Air Force Contract No. FA8702-15-D-0001. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Air Force.

If you cannot attend in person but would like to remotely, please contact Lynne_Schaufenbil@uml.edu for the Zoom link.