This paper proposes a novel optical system to form an aerial image over a transparent sphere. The proposed optical system is composed of two transparent acrylic spheres in the light path of the aerial imaging by retro-reflection (AIRR) device. The first sphere collects the diverging light rays from a light-source display. The second sphere converges retro-reflected light rays to the aerial image. Raytracing simulation results shows that the area of light entering the retro-reflector can be reduced. Furthermore, this reduction of retro-reflector has been confirmed with a prototype aerial display by the use of a piece of retro-reflector. Thus, the proposed optical system features reduction in the area of expensive retro-reflector.
In the AIRR optical system that combines transparent spheres, the MTF due to quasi‐parallelization is greatly improve according to the placement distance of the transparent spheres. Due to the effect of aberration, the MTF reaches its maximum when the sphere is placed outside its Paraxial approximate focal length.
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