Nonmechanical Multizoom Telescope Design Using a Liquid Crystal Spatial Light Modulator and Focus-Correction Algorithm

Theoretical development and design of a compact nonmechanical multi-zoom telescope system is presented. A liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC SLM) enables selection of four separate beam paths without the use of moving parts. Each path incurs a different focus aberration in the image plane that can be deconvolved with postprocessing to yield four possible corrected magnification options. To increase flexibility, each region has a 40-wave subrange of focus. Optical zooms of up to 10 times magnification are feasible and are limited only by system noise and signal to noise ratio. Elimination of moving parts for focus could prove beneficial for systems in which weight, volume, and power consumption have stringent requirements. The presented design can be constructed using all commercial off-the-shelf parts