Abstract

The increasing use of freeform optical surfaces raises the demand for optical design tools developed for generalized systems. In the design process, surface-by-surface aberration contributions are of special interest. The expansion of the wave aberration function into field- and pupil-dependent coefficients is an analytical method used for that purpose. An alternative numerical approach utilizing data from the trace of multiple ray sets is proposed. The optical system is divided into segments of the optical path measured along the chief ray. Each segment covers one surface and the distance to the subsequent surface. Surface contributions represent the change of the wavefront that occurs due to propagation through individual segments. Further, the surface contributions are divided with respect to their phenomenological origin into intrinsic induced and transfer components. Each component is determined from a separate set of rays. The proposed method does not place any constraints on the system geometry or the aperture shape. However, here we concentrate on near-circular apertures and specify the resulting wavefront error maps using an expansion into Zernike polynomials.

© 2017 Optical Society of America

Analysis of freeform mirror systems based on the decomposition of the total wave aberration into Zernike surface contributions

Mateusz Oleszko and Herbert Gross
Appl. Opt. 57(9) 1998-2006 (2018)

Theory of aberration fields for general optical systems with freeform surfaces

Kyle Fuerschbach, Jannick P. Rolland, and Kevin P. Thompson
Opt. Express 22(22) 26585-26606 (2014)

Nodal aberration properties of coaxial imaging systems using Zernike polynomial surfaces

Tong Yang, Jun Zhu, and Guofan Jin
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 32(5) 822-836 (2015)

Sixth-order wave aberration theory of ultrawide-angle optical systems

Lijun Lu and Yiqing Cao
Appl. Opt. 56(30) 8570-8583 (2017)

Derivation of the refraction equations for higher-order aberrations of local wavefronts at oblique incidence

G. Esser, W. Becken, W. Müller, P. Baumbach, J. Arasa, and D. Uttenweiler
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 27(2) 218-237 (2010)