ABSTRACT
The compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) is a 2-D concentrator designed for capturing and concentrating a radiation fi eld with a given angular aperture onto a fl at receiver. This radiation fi eld can be thought of as being created by an infi nitely large source at an infi nite distance. The edge rays of the incoming radiation come from the edges of the (infi nite) source and are concentrated onto the edges of the receiver. This basic principle can be used to generate many other nonimaging devices. Its generalization is called the “edge-ray principle” and is the basis of nonimaging optics.
