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Article
Iterative Scheme for Solving Optimal Transportation Problems Arising in Reflector Design
ISRN Applied Mathematics
  • Tilmann Glimm, Western Washington University
  • Nick Henscheid, University of Arizona
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2013
Keywords
  • Optimal transportation theory,
  • Reflector design
Disciplines
Abstract

We consider the geometric optics problem of finding a system of two reflectors that transform a spherical wavefront into a beam of parallel rays with prescribed intensity distribution. Using techniques from optimal transportation theory, it has been shown previously that this problem is equivalent to an infinite-dimensional linear programming (LP) problem. Here we investigate techniques for constructing the two reflectors numerically by considering the finite dimensional LP problems which arise as approximations to the infinite dimensional problem. A straightforward discretization has the disadvantage that the number of constraints increases rapidly with the mesh size, so only very coarse meshes are practical. To address this well-known issue we propose an iterative solution scheme. In each step an LP problem is solved, where information from the previous iteration step is used to reduce the number of necessary constraints. As an illustration we apply our proposed scheme to solve a problem with synthetic data, demonstrating that the method allows for much finer meshes than a simple discretization. We also give evidence that the scheme converges. There exists a growing literature for the application of optimal transportation theory to other beam shaping problems, and our proposed scheme is easy to adapt for these problems as well.

DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/635263
Subjects - Topical (LCSH)
Reflectors, Lighting--Design and construction--Mathematical models; Geometrical optics; Mathematical optimization
Genre/Form
articles
Type
Text
Rights
Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
Tilmann Glimm and Nick Henscheid. "Iterative Scheme for Solving Optimal Transportation Problems Arising in Reflector Design" ISRN Applied Mathematics Vol. Article ID 635263 (2013)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/tilmann_glimm/3/