ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 7 -- United States Patent no. 12,596,307, issued on April 7, was assigned to Carl Zeiss SMT GmbH (Oberkochen, Germany).
"Imaging optical unit" was invented by Hans-Jurgen Rostalski (Oberkochen, Germany), Holger Munz (Aalen, Germany) and Christoph Menke (Oberkochen, Germany).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An imaging optical unit comprises a plurality of mirrors for imaging an object field in an object plane into an image field in an image plane. An image-side numerical aperture is greater than 0.55. A ratio between an object/image offset and a meridional transverse direction is at least 0.5. A ratio between a working distance between the object plane and a reflection port...