See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/250001982

The Forbes Polynomial: A More Predictable Surface For Fabricators

Article · June 2010

DOI: 10.1364/OFT.2010.OTuA6

CITATION READS
1 708

4 authors, including:

Kevin P Thompson Jannick P Rolland

Synopsys University of Rochester
114 PUBLICATIONS   1,852 CITATIONS    532 PUBLICATIONS   7,721 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

XR - Cross Reality and Applications View project

Optical Coherence Elastography View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Jannick P Rolland on 14 June 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 OSA / IODC/OF&T 2010
OTuA6.pdf

The Forbes Polynomial:

A more predictable surface for fabricators
Kevin P. Thompson,1,* Florian Fournier,2 Jannick P. Rolland,2 G.W. Forbes3
1
Optical Research Associates, 3 Graywood Lane, Suite 100, Pittsford, NY, 14534, USA
2
EvoOpticks, 3 Graywood Lane, Suite 201, Pittsford, NY, 14534, USA
3
QED Technologies, Inc., 1040 University Ave., Rochester, NY, 14607, USA
*KThompson@opticalres.com

Abstract: The Forbes polynomial is an important new surface type that allows coefficient
tolerances to be meaningful and allows the difficulty of fabrication to be quantified. Implications
and guidance to fabricators will be presented.
©2010 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (220.1250) Aspherics; (220.4610) Optical fabrication

Greg Forbes, in his paper in this conference [1], has discussed the mathematical motivations for changing the
standard description of aspheric surfaces and proposed a new description that is motivated by new capabilities for
finishing and in conjunction measuring aspheric parts. This talk is meant to represent a strong support for this new
standard, from the perspective of optical design as a context for optical fabricators to prioritize recognizing the
significance and importance of this new, more effective formulation to replace power series aspheres.
There are a number of motivations for changing from the historical power series based definition of a
rotationally symmetric, nonspherical transmitting optical surface for imaging applications to the Forbes polynomial
definition; many of these motivations are compelling for the fabricator. One key motivation is that of enabling a
reduction in the price of an aspheric surface by substantially improving the ability to predict the cost of fabricating
the surface. By establishing metrics that clearly and predictably quantify whether an optical surface falls into the
manufacturing envelope for an emerging class of polishing and in-process measurement equipment based on MRF
(Magneto-Rheological Finishing) and other emerging methods, a fabricator will be empowered to confidently
predict the difficultly to manufacture a particular surface description and as a result its cost. As described in the
earlier paper, the coefficients that specify the power-series based description of a rotationally symmetric optical
surface are failing on a number of fronts. Some of the causes can be attributed to the optical design process and
others to intrinsic limitations in the traditional power series description of the aspheric departure.
To understand why the power series description is failing, and why it is failing now, it is interesting to look
at the history of the power series aspheric surface description. There are two perspectives here, the first is the use of
power series aspheres at all in the context of the design of lens versus mirror systems and the second is their usage in
specifically computer-aided optical design. In the context of their introduction into the process of optical design,
almost all references point to Ernst Abbe. In 1899, Abbe filed a US Patent, 697,959, titled simply “Lens System”.
The figures from the filing, which is readily accessible, are shown in Figure 1.

R1=17.3
R2=24.86
d1=2.9
d2=1.2
d3=3.0
n1=1.52034
n2=1.53322

Figure 1. Figures from Abbe’s patent 697,959, filed 1899 (granted 1902)

These figures support a discussion wherein Abbe presents a new option for reducing the field aberrations in
the lens shown in the third panel. Figure 2 provides Abbe’s explanation of the reasoning behind the introduction of
a power series expansion of the departure of the surface shape from a sphere into the optical design process.
 OSA / IODC/OF&T 2010
OTuA6.pdf

Figure 2. Text from Abbe’s patent 697,959

Abbe introduces what so far is proving to be the first appearance of a power series polynomial approximation of an
optical surface in the lens design literature, with the specific text from the patent illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3. The first appearance of a power series description of an aspheric surface in the
context of optical design, from Abbe’s patent 697,959.

Certainly, it would be beyond conception, even to Abbe, that the “….,” in Figure 3 would come to pass, even if it
did take 100 years.
Looking at computer-aided optical design, it appears the aspheric surfaces were introduced into the
computer aided design hardware (in the earliest days there was no such thing as software, yet) by a number of
groups who were working the problem simultaneously around 1949-1951, each affiliated with a specific early
computer at Harvard, NBS, and Los Alamos. James G. Baker, one of the earliest adopters of aspheres in lens design,
who also mastered their fabrication, was leading one of the teams, working at Harvard. In Chapter III “ASPHERIC
RAY-TRACING” of the then classified report under the direction of Baker; written in the case by G.H. Conant, Jr.
one finds the following statement,

“The series expansion method for the aspheric components, the method of which we are making
use, was mentioned some 53 years ago by Abbe in German and English patents, as referred to in
the von Rohr book (The Formation of Optical Images). One of the most recent formulations for
aspheric calculations is that by Feder (JOSA 41, 630 (1951), where an iterative procedure
suitable for automatic computation is described”

For those who have never seen the early days of computers, the methods used in the earliest days involved the layout
of “plug boards”. Figure 4 shows the new plug board layout as modified to incorporate aspheric raytracing. This
perspective illustrates that the power series asphere was introduced at a time in history that could not anticipate the
challenges it is applied to today. Therefore, it should be no surprise that it needs to be replaced, and within optical
design, CODE V® has implemented the Forbes polynomial within lens optimization and analysis.
There are two reasons for the failure of the power series asphere at this point in time. First, the field of
lithography, in particular, is reaching new thresholds in operational numerical aperture and the naturally occurring
 OSA / IODC/OF&T 2010
OTuA6.pdf

Figure 4.Aspheric ray-trace plug board, from the earliest days of computer-aided optical design.

limiting spherical aberration requires aspheres of orders that exceed available number of significant digits, as clearly
demonstrated in the earlier paper by Forbes [1]. This is the scientifically compelling need. Separately, in the last
decade, the commercial optical design programs have reformatted their input and output to make the opportunity to
use more coefficients essentially too convenient. Somewhat akin to the concept of designing a telescope with empty
magnification, it is all too easy for a novice optical designer to invoke considerably more aspheric coefficients than
are called for by the problem at hand. This second cause is seen recently in patents filed within the cell phone
industry, as discussed in a paper by McGuire at this conference, [2].
For the fabricator, especially one without an in-house optical design group, which is not uncommon, it is
difficult to know if the asphere they are being asked to fabricate has the proper number of terms. With the
emergence of optical finishing equipment that is particularly suited to the fabrication of aspheres, it has become an
industry challenge to establish a price point that encourages optical designers to introduce them throughout their
optical designs. While there is a “rule of thumb” that says that if an asphere is added an element can be removed, a
recent comprehensive study by Cakmakci [3] of 3188 lenses from the LensView™ database, indicates that in fact it
requires the introduction of two aspheric surfaces to effectively eliminate a lens in an optical system.
What are potentially the most powerful features of the Forbes polynomial for aspheric surfaces are first that
they have units of length, and therefore their value is their contribution to the surface departure in, for example,
microns. This will be a descending series and once it falls below a threshold, say 0.05 microns, the remaining terms
become irrelevant. This fact will be clear to any fabricator and, in addition, it can be used in the optical design
process to automatically control in real-time the set of “live” coefficients. It is this feature that is expected to lead
shortly to a quantitative metric for the cost of an asphere, as to a large extent the cost is directly related to the
number of aspheric terms and the slope. The second powerful feature is that unlike the fact that power series
coefficients are statistically meaningless if one tries to establish a tolerance on the coefficient, as shown by
Rogers [4], Forbes polynomial coefficients can be given tolerances that are meaningful. It is these two features that
are anticipated, and in fact expected, to accelerate the industry acceptance to this new standard for the specification
of rotationally symmetric nonspherical surfaces.
REFERENCES
[1]Forbes, G.W., “Better ways to specify aspheric shapes can facilitate design, fab., and testing alike”, IODC, (2010).
[2] McGuire, J.P. “Manufacturable mobile phone optics: higher order aspheres are not always better”, IODC, (2010).
[3] Cakmakci, O., et al., “Design efficiency of 3188 optical designs”, SPIE Proc. 7060, 7060S-1, (2008).
[4] Rogers, J.R., “Slope error tolerances for optical surfaces “, Presented at OSA OptiFab, paper TD04-4 (2007).

View publication stats