Optical design with Wood lenses 1: infinite conjugate systems

Area of Science:

• Optics
• Optical Engineering

Background:

• Radial gradient-index lenses, or Wood lenses, with parabolic profiles suffer from spherical aberration.
• Modifying the index profile to include higher-order terms corrects spherical aberration but introduces significant third-order coma.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present an alternative method for correcting aberrations in Wood lenses.
• To adapt aberration correction techniques from catadioptric Schmidt systems for Wood lenses.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a Wood lens with a parabolic-index profile for primary optical power.
• Implementing stop shifting to correct third-order coma.
• Introducing a powerless Wood lens corrector plate at the stop to correct spherical aberration.

Main Results:

• The proposed method effectively corrects both spherical aberration and third-order coma in Wood lenses.
• The system achieves aberration correction without adding significant optical power through the corrector plate.

Conclusions:

• This approach offers an effective alternative for aberration correction in Wood lenses.
• The method draws parallels with established techniques in catadioptric systems, suggesting broader applicability.