Abstract

A curved refractive or reflective interface coated with a diffractive optical element can be characterized by two properties: it forms a perfect image of itself, and rays traversing the surface incur a discontinuous change in optical path length. I show how these two properties can be used to construct the angle eikonal of the surface in a simple, straightforward manner. The technique presented will be used to derive several theorems concerning the system corrected for spherical aberration for all conjugates that was discussed by David Shafer at last year's conference.

© 1992 Optical Society of America