Abstract
In a recent paper, we considered the classical aberrations of an anamorphic optical imaging system with a rectangular pupil, representing the terms of a power series expansion of its aberration function. These aberrations are inherently separable in the Cartesian coordinates of a point on the pupil. Accordingly, there is -defocus and -coma, -defocus and -coma, and so on. We showed that the aberration polynomials orthonormal over the pupil and representing balanced aberrations for such a system are represented by the products of two Legendre polynomials, one for each of the two Cartesian coordinates of the pupil point; for example, , where and are positive integers (including zero) and , for example, represents an orthonormal Legendre polynomial of degree in . The compound two-dimensional (2D) Legendre polynomials, like the classical aberrations, are thus also inherently separable in the Cartesian coordinates of the pupil point. Moreover, for every orthonormal polynomial , there is a corresponding orthonormal polynomial obtained by interchanging and . These polynomials are different from the corresponding orthogonal polynomials for a system with rotational symmetry but a rectangular pupil. In this paper, we show that the orthonormal aberration polynomials for an anamorphic system with a circular pupil, obtained by the Gram–Schmidt orthogonalization of the 2D Legendre polynomials, are not separable in the two coordinates. Moreover, for a given polynomial in and , there is no corresponding polynomial obtained by interchanging and . For example, there are polynomials representing -defocus, balanced -coma, and balanced -spherical aberration, but no corresponding -aberration polynomials. The missing -aberration terms are contained in other polynomials. We emphasize that the Zernike circle polynomials, although orthogonal over a circular pupil, are not suitable for an anamorphic system as they do not represent balanced aberrations for such a system.
©2012 Optical Society of America
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