Distortion measurement of optical system using phase diffractive beam splitter.

Traditional methods for distortion measurement of large-aperture optical systems are time-consuming and ineffective because they require each field of view to be individually measured using a high-precision rotating platform. In this study, a new method that uses a phase diffractive beam splitter (DBS) is proposed to measure the distortion of optical systems, which has great potential application for the large-aperture optical system. The proposed method has a very high degree of accuracy and is extremely economical. A high-precision calibration method is proposed to measure the angular distribution of the DBS. The uncertainty analysis of the factors involved in the measurement process has been performed to highlight the low level of errors in the measurement methodology. Results show that high-precision measurements of the focal length and distortion were successfully achieved with high efficiency. The proposed method can be used for large-aperture wide-angle optical systems such as those used for aerial mapping applications.