Abstract

A compound parabolic concentrator is a nonimaging cone-shaped optic with useful angular transmission characteristics. A pair of these concentrating cones used throat-to-throat will accept light within one well-defined acceptance angle and redistribute it into another. If the first cone is fed with a diffuse source (Lambertian input), the irradiance within the cross section of the beam of light emerging from the second cone will be uniform from near the exit mouth of the second cone to infinity. Also, the beam of light will be confined to the acceptance angle of the second cone (that is, the pair operates as a beam-angle transformer). The design and fabrication of one such pair of cones and an experiment to map the irradiance pattern produced by the pair are discussed. A ray tracing program for compound parabolic concentrating cones is discussed along with a method of modeling a Lambertian source in the ray trace. Experimental results are compared with ray trace results.

© 1985 Optical Society of America