Abstract
The human eye suffers from significant amounts of ocular chromatic aberration (OCA) caused primarily by chromatic dispersion, which in turn is caused by the variation of refractive indices of the eye’s refractive media with wavelength. Chromatic dispersion causes the focus, size, and position of retinal images to vary with wavelength as illustrated schematically in Fig. 1. Variation in the focusing power of the eye with wavelength is called longitudinal (or axial) chromatic aberration (LCA), typically quantified in diopters. LCA causes the retinal conjugate in object space to vary with wavelength, which means that only one wavelength of light emitted by a broad-spectrum source can be well-focused on the entrance apertures of retinal photoreceptors at any moment in time. Retinal image size for extended objects also varies with wavelength, which is called chromatic difference of magnification (CDM). For any given point on an extended object, the position of the retinal image varies with wavelength. This phenomenon is called transverse (or lateral) chromatic aberration (TCA), usually specified as a visual angle subtended at the eye’s nodal point or pupil center.
© 2012 Optical Society of America
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