Generation of spherical aberration with axially translating phase plates via extrinsic aberration

Jose Sasian,Eva Acosta

doi:10.1364/oe.22.000289

Abstract

We show that spherical aberration of all orders can be generated as an extrinsic aberration in a system of axially translating plates. Some practical examples are provided. In particular for two phase plates that are 10 mm in diameter it is possible to generate from -10 to 10 waves of fourth-order spherical aberration with an axial displacement of +/- 0.65 mm. We also apply the phenomenon of extrinsic aberration for the generation of a conical wavefront and other non-axially symmetric wavefronts, in other words we propose what can be called a generalized zoom plate.

Highlights

After the seminal work of Alvarez [1,2] a variety of papers have been published about the generation of aberration by the relative translation, or rotation of two complementary phase plates [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
The basic theory is that the subtraction of the wavefront deformation introduced by one plate from the wavefront introduced by the other plate results in a particular type of aberration
The case of fourth order spherical aberration is of practical interest as there are applications in ophthalmology, optical testing, and optical alignment [8,13,14] where having the ability to introduce a desired amount of spherical aberration would be of value

Summary

Introduction

After the seminal work of Alvarez [1,2] a variety of papers have been published about the generation of aberration by the relative translation, or rotation of two complementary phase plates [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Extrinsic aberration results when there is previous aberration incoming to an element that contributes aberration. We first discuss extrinsic aberrations and present some application for generating aberration. This paper follows our previous work on phase plates [9]. The system of two phase plates presented here is quite a simple and can be used in ophthalmology, optical testing, microscopy, optical alignment, and other applications [13,14]. While the concept is implemented using refractive optics, it can be implemented with diffractive optics as well [15]

Extrinsic aberrations

Spherical aberration

Conical wavefront

Conclusions