Holger Münz

Design of extreme anamorphic laser illumination systems

Many laser applications, for example material processing or fluorescence imaging, require intense and uniform illumination over a rectangular, slit shaped area with extreme aspect ratio: The short dimension of the illumination field typically requires diffraction limited imaging, respectively focusing, on a micrometer scale. In contrast the extension in the long dimension can be hundreds of millimeters. This class of systems requires a highly anamorphic system design for the homogenization as well as for the projection of the illumination pattern. Aberrations within the projection optical system, as for example induced by cylindrical optical components, need to be analyzed and controlled. In some cases the application additionally requires the substrate to be illuminated under some tilted angle, which requires specific solutions within the optical design. We will illustrate corresponding design examples and solutions for this class of illumination systems.

Tackling the challenges of fully immersive head-mounted AR devices

The optical requirements of fully immersive head mounted AR devices are inherently determined by the human visual system. The etendue of the visual system is large. As a consequence, the requirements for fully immersive head-mounted AR devices exceeds almost any high end optical system. Two promising solutions to achieve the large etendue and their challenges are discussed. Head-mounted augmented reality devices have been developed for decades – mostly for application within aircrafts and in combination with a heavy and bulky helmet. The established head-up displays for applications within automotive vehicles typically utilize similar techniques. Recently, there is the vision of eyeglasses with included augmentation, offering a large field of view, and being unobtrusively all-day wearable. There seems to be no simple solution to reach the functional performance requirements. Known technical solutions paths seem to be a dead-end, and some seem to offer promising perspectives, however with severe limitations. As an alternative, unobtrusively all-day wearable devices with a significantly smaller field of view are already possible.