How to approach the design of a bilateral symmetric optical system

Abstract

A theoretical development is presented for understanding and designing bilateral symmetric optical systems. This development uses concepts familiar to the optical engineer and is an extension to the wave theory of axially symmetric systems. An aberration function is developed and the image position and size, image defects, and aberration fields are discussed. The main dependence of aberrations as a function of system parameters is established by a set of approximate aberration coefficients and some guidelines to approach the design of bilateral symmetric systems are presented.