An Optical Cavity Design for an Infrared Gas Detector Using an Off-axis Parabolic Mirror

This study examined a method for designing the optical cavity of a non-dispersive infrared gas detector. The infrared gas detector requires an optical cavity design to lengthen the ray path. However, the optical cavity with multiple reflecting surfaces has off-axis aberration due to the characteristics of the reflecting optical system. The rays were parallelized by using the off-axis parabolic mirror to easily increase the ray path and eliminate off-axis aberration so that the rays are admitted to the effective area of the infrared detector uniformly. A prototype of an infrared gas detector was produced with the designed optical cavity to confirm the performance.