Aerodynamic solid nose cone formed with an afocal axicon lens and method of imaging
Abstract:
An aerodynamic nose cone capable of imaging through the nose cone is accomplished by forming the nose cone as an Afocal Axicon lens. Under a condition of RI≈cos(X)/cos(3X) where RI is an effective refractive index and X is a cone half angle of the solid right-circular cone. EMR incident on a front portion of the cone undergoes a total internal reflection (TIR) and exits a trailing surface of the cone with approximately the same parallelism with which it entered the cone. EMR incident behind the front portion of the cone that exits the trailing surface with different parallelism than it entered may be directed to a light dump or through a frustum of a cone to re-establish the correct parallelism. The entire optical system may be monolithically integrated into the nose cone to eliminate alignment issues and moving parts.
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