"First time right" - calculating imaging systems from scratch -INVITED

Freeform optics can be used to greatly extend the functionalities, improve performance, and reduce volume weight of optical systems. Today, design imaging systems largely relies on efficient ray tracing optimization algorithms. Such a "step-and-repeat" approach typically requires considerable experience, intuition, eventually "trial-and-error" guesswork. This time-consuming process applies especially freeform In this work, we present deterministic direct method for based differential equations derived from Fermat’s principle solved using power series. The allows calculating all surface coefficients that ensure minimal image blurring each individual order aberrations. We demonstrate systematic, deterministic, scalable, holistic character our with several catoptric catadioptric examples.