Chromatic aberrations of thin refractive variable-focus lens

We present an approach to an analysis of the third order chromatic aberrations of thin refractive fluid lenses with a variable focal length. A detailed theoretical analysis is performed for a simple fluidic variable-focus lens and formulas are derived for an optical design of such lenses. Aberration coefficients of the third order of the variable-focus lens can be completely characterized by three parameters which depend only on refractive indices of fluids forming the variable-focus lens. Formulas were derived for the change of the third-order aberration coefficients with the wavelength. Calculations are provided for Varioptic lens Arctic-416.