Taking diffractive efficiency into account in the design of refractive/diffractive optical systems

We propose that known methodologies for design, calculation, and optimization of optical imaging systems that include a diffractive lens be expanded to incorporate requirements to ensure that such a lens has high diffractive efficiency over a relatively broad spectral range and over a wide range of angles of incidence for incoming light relative to the lens microstructure, which is a necessary condition to ensure the nearly complete elimination of stray images due to side diffraction orders. The effectiveness of the proposed improved method is demonstrated using the example of a broad-pectral-range refractive/diffractive objective in which the broad spectral range includes the visible and near infrared. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America.