Interaction of pupil offset and fifth-order nodal aberration field properties in rotationally symmetric telescopes

Abstract

In this paper we succeeded in deriving changes in the nodal positions of aberrations that belong to the fifth-order class in pupil dependence by applying a system level pupil decentration vector. Our treatment is specifically for rotationally symmetric multi-mirror optical designs that simply use an offset pupil as a means of creating an unobscured optical design. When the pupil is offset, only the vectors to determine the node locations are modified by the pupil decentration vector, while the nodal properties originally developed for titled/decentered optical systems are retained. In general, the modifications to the nodal vectors for any particular aberration type are contributed only by terms of higher order pupil dependence.