Computer-guided alignment III: description of inter-element alignment effect in circular-pupil optical systems

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics express 2008-07, Vol.16 (15), p.10992-11006
Main Authors: Lee, Hanshin, Dalton, Gavin B, Tosh, Ian A, Kim, Sug-Whan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Computer Simulation
Computer-Aided Design
Equipment Design
Equipment Failure Analysis - methods
Models, Theoretical
Optics and Photonics - instrumentation
Pupil
Scattering, Radiation
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1094-4087
1094-4087
DOI:10.1364/OE.16.010992