Eyepiece designs with radial and spherical polymer gradient-index optical elements

Radial and spherical polymer gradient-index (GRIN) eyepiece designs are presented. The chromatic behavior of GRIN profiles is constrained to real material properties of a polymethyl methacrylate polystyrene copolymer gradient-index system. Single-element, two-element, and multielement eyepiece design configurations each demonstrate significant spot diameter and modulation transfer function performance improvements with the use of a GRIN element. A high-performance spherical GRIN eyepiece design, with 48-deg full field-of-view and 3% distortion, is compared to a similar homogeneous glass solution. (C) 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)