Open AccessComputer-guided alignment III: Description of inter-element alignment effect in circular-pupil optical systems
Author(s) -
Hanshin Lee,
Gavin Dalton,
Ian Tosh,
Sug Whan Kim
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.16.010992
Subject(s) - optics , paraxial approximation , physics , robustness (evolution) , ray tracing (physics) , optical aberration , tilt (camera) , zernike polynomials , displacement (psychology) , adaptive optics , wavefront , geometry , beam (structure) , mathematics , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , psychotherapist , gene
We present an analytic description of the inter-element alignment effect of misaligned optical systems with circular pupils. The description shows that decenter and tilt produce lateral displacement of the field and pupil coordinates, whilst a despace directly modifies the aberration coefficients by perturbing paraxial distances and scale factors of the two coordinates. This reveals that a misaligned surface not only changes its aberration characteristics, but also affects those of subsequent surfaces, which is the essence of the inter-element alignment effect. This description, combined with primary aberration theory, was applied to various misaligned systems to approximate their aberrations and alignment sensitivities given by ray-tracing. The results demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of this approach. We also discuss the potential usefulness of the description in estimating the axial separations between surfaces.