Thermal Lens

The thermal lens has a quadratic transverse variation of refractive index, with either a maximum or minimum on the axis that produces a lensing effect.

This element is entirely similar to GRIN Lens, however instead of setting gradient constant n2, you can explicitly assign focal range F, and gradient constant is calculated using the GRIN Lens Assessment tool.

The element is cylindrically symmetrical and doesn’t imply differences between tangential and sagittal planes.

../_images/ElemThermoLens.svg

See also

Thermal medium, Elements Matrices, ../catalog, ../elem_props, Gradient-index optics in Wikipedia