Conformal optical design with combination of static and dynamic aberration corrections

Conformal domes that are shaped to meet aerodynamic requirements can increase range and speed for the host platform. Because these domes typically deviate greatly from spherical surface descriptions, a variety of aberrations are induced which vary with the field-of-regard （FOR） angle. A system for correcting optical aberrations created by a conformal dome has an outer surface and an inner surface. Optimizing the inner surface is regard as static aberration correction. A deformable mirror is placed at the position of the secondary mirror in the two-mirror all reflective imaging system, which is the dynamic aberration correction. An ellipsoidal MgF2 conformal dome with a fineness ratio of 1.0 is designed as an example. The FOR angle is 0°-30°, and the design wavelength is 4μm. After the optimization at 7 zoom positions by using the design tools Code V, the root-mean-square （RMS） spot size is reduced to approximately 0.99 to 1.48 times the diffraction limit. The design results show that the performances of the conformal optical systems can be greatly improved by the combination of the static correction and the dynamic correction.