Suppression of primary chromatic aberration by genetic algorithm in an advanced telephoto lens

This paper proposes a new method for finding a suitable glass combination set for an advanced telephoto lens via a genetic algorithm (GA). Normally, glass properties, inclusive of index and Abbe number, play a significant role in the elimination of primary chromatic aberration. So many optical glasses (over 300 different refractive types) have been developed hitherto that it is difficult to choose a state-of-the-art glass combination quickly. According to the newly developed GA operations in this paper, however, several suitable glass combinations can be found quickly through a unique sequence of function selection, crossover and mutation. An advanced telephoto lens design is employed in this research, which has the characteristic of being more sensitive to axial aberrations than lateral chromatic aberrations. The GA operations are described in the macro of the optical software program, CODE V. The simulation results in this research show that the primary chromatic aberration is efficiently eliminated after the application of GA. The main goal of this research is that during optimization, error function could be minimized only if primary aberrations are well under control in our first step; in a telephoto lens, the secondary spectrum of longitudinal chromatic aberration and lateral chromatic aberration caused by distortion play a role in chromatic aberration control as well; however, optimization with a combination of both primary chromatic aberration and secondary chromatic aberration will complicate the process with a lot of working variables. The GA method introduced in this paper might efficiently eliminate the primary chromatic aberration first by finding the best glass combination and its trend and then simplifying the following optimization process for all optical systems.