What Is the Aberration of Light?

Aberration ^[1] (full aberration, aberration) refers to that in actual optical systems, the results obtained by non-paraxial ray tracing and the results obtained by paraxial ray tracing are not consistent with Gaussian optics (first-order approximation Paraxial rays). The aberrations are mainly divided into spherical aberration, coma, field curvature, astigmatism, distortion, chromatic aberration, and wave aberration. The entry describes the above aberrations in detail.

Aberrations are generally divided into two categories:

concept

In a coaxial spherical system ^[4]

concept

In most cases ^[7]

After the wavefront emitted from the object point passes through the ideal optical system ^[8] , its outgoing wavefront should be spherical. However, there are aberrations in the actual optical system, and the actual wavefront deviates from the ideal surface. When the actual wavefront and the ideal wavefront are tangent at the exit pupil, the optical path difference between the two wavefronts is the wave aberration.