Full field dependence of primary aberrations in perturbed double-plane symmetric systems with a circular pupil.

Abstract

This paper deals with the theory of primary aberrations for perturbed double-plane symmetric optical systems consisting of a combination of tilted and decentered surfaces and a circular pupil. First, the analytical expressions describing the full field behavior of Zernike polynomials are derived from the fourth-order wavefront aberration function for this class of optical systems. Then, such expressions are combined to retrieve the full field dependence of primary coma, primary astigmatism, and field curvature. They are described by an elliptical conic-shaped surface with a variable apex location over the field of view, by a binodal surface with two nodes over the field of view, and by a general elliptical surface with one node. The proposed analytical expressions provide a better understanding of the primary aberration behavior for these systems and can be of great use in their optical design and aberration correction. An optical system constituted by a pair of tilted and decentered biconic lenses is studied to validate the proposed expressions.