Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to optical aberrations in axially symmetric systems. An understanding of the process of optical image formation is important in a variety of fields. Many systems are modeled to some useful extent as linear shift ­invariant systems, which are characterized by a point spread function. A remarkable attribute of such linear systems is that the image is given by the convolution of the object with the system’s point spread function. Since aberrations influence the point spread function, it is then important to understand the nature of optical aberrations. Sharp imaging requires the absence of aberrations.