Chunyu Zhao 2001 Awardee

An Interview by Cathy Alexander, Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona

Chunyu Zhao is a PhD candidate at the Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. He received a bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics with a specialty in Optics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. After graduation, he worked in industry for several years before applying to Temple University in Philadelphia, where he partook of the Physics Department’s Master’s program. Chunyu is currently working on his dissertation at the Optical Sciences Center entitled “The Criteria for Correcting all the Quadratic Field-Dependent Aberrations.”

His advisor is Professor James Burge. “Dr. Burge is a very experienced optical designer and a great mentor. In addition to Professor Burge, I also appreciate the assistance of Professor Jose Sasian and Professor Roland Shack. They are always willing to help work out problems that I come across, and I learn new things every time I talk to them.”

Chunyu’s interest in optical design began only a few years ago at the Optical Sciences Center when he discovered the story of H. Dennis Taylor’s invention of the Cooke Triplet. “It is such an elegant design,” he said. “Even with all of the excellent design software on the market now, optical design is still a knowledge-intensive business and, because optical systems are becoming more and more complicated, I think it always will be.”

“At the Optical Sciences Center, I’ve been fortunate to be involved in several projects, including an exciting project for Jim Burge: building an interferometer that was used to test the prototype for NGST, the Next Generation Space Telescope. Other work included developing a theory for correcting aberrations, and a related project involved designing well-corrected all aspheric-surface systems under the guidance of that theory. My current project is my dissertation research.”

Chunyu’s dissertation is focused on the development of a criterion for correcting all the quadratic field-dependent aberrations of an optical system. “The criterion for an axially symmetric system has been derived and involves only the properties of the rays originating from the on-axis object point, but it predicts off-axis aberrations with quadratic field dependence. The constant optical path difference, or OPD condition, the Sine Condition, and the criterion correct aberrations of all orders of pupil dependence; the three conditions can be combined to design optical systems with very high numerical aperture and moderate field of view. So far, I have designed a four-surface system that satisfies all three conditions to prove the concept of imposing them in optical design. As far as I know, the result of this research is new to the optical design community. It has applications to high-resolution system design, but its full potential is still unknown.”

Chunyu said, “I’m very honoured to be chosen to receive the Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship. I would like to thank The Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship Committee for this generous scholarship and HP Labs for the laptop and printer.”