Design and optimization method of a convex blazed grating in the Offner imaging spectrometer

The convex reflective diffraction grating is an essential optical component in Offner systems, which has been widely used in imaging spectrometers. We propose a new design and optimization method for the convex blazed grating in the Offner imaging spectrometer. The method integrates the macro- and microdesign of the optical system, and it can be used to design and optimize the convex blazed grating with high diffraction efficiency. Traditional geometric optics theory and image quality evaluation methods are used to design the macro-optical structure parameters of the Offner system. And then the incident ray information, such as the incident angle and the polarization states are calculated by using the three-dimensional polarization ray-tracing method. To improve the diffraction efficiency, we combine rigorous coupled wave analysis and a particle swarm optimization algorithm to optimize the microstructure parameters of the convex-blazed grating. Further, a convex-blazed grating in a mid-wave infrared Offner imaging spectrometer is designed as an example to illustrate our design method in detail. The design results indicate that the Offner imaging spectrometer has good imaging quality, and the average diffraction efficiency of the -1st diffraction order of the convex-blazed grating in the spectral coverage 3-5 µm is 82.24%. Compared to the traditional design method, the lowest spectral diffraction efficiency is improved from 59.88% to 69.24%, the highest spectral diffraction efficiency is improved from 90.45% to 91.84%, and the standard deviation is reduced from 7.82 to 6.62.