Title

Satisfying The Abbe Sine Condition Can Result In Inferior Optical Performance

Keywords

Abbe sine condition; Aplanatic optical designs

Abstract

It has been stated that satisfying the Abbe sine condition is not just a good idea; it's the law! And indeed there is a wide-spread perception among optical designers/engineers that an optical design that strictly satisfies the Abbe sine condition is always better than a design that does not satisfy the Abbe sine condition. There is likewise a widespread perception that an aplanatic optical design is always better than a non-aplanatic design. Believe it or not, in this paper on key lessons learned, I will dispel those widespread perceptions by demonstrating that the Abbe sine condition is not a law, and sometimes it is not even a good idea! I will do this by discussing several imaging applications where an optical design strictly satisfying the Abbe sine condition (or an aplanatic design) actually results in optical performance inferior to that of an optical design with the same 1st1-order properties that does not satisfy the Abbe sine condition (or the aplanatic condition).

Publication Date

12-23-2008

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

7071

Number of Pages

-

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.814213

Socpus ID

57749121873 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/57749121873

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