Computer-aided aberration compensation in optical system assembly

We propose a computer-aided approach for residual aberration compensation of optical systems after initial assembly. The approach considers that intrinsic variables of an optical system such as index of refraction, radius of curvature and thickness are approximately equivalent in small ranges and the residual aberrations may be attributed to the error of one of them (e.g., index). In this way, if experimental wavefront aberration seriously deviates from theoretical one, it may be easy to estimate the exact amount of axial movements of one or more lenses needed to compensate for the aberrations. Normally, two iterative attempts (i.e., disassembly, spacer customization, reassembly and testing) are enough to give an acceptable level of performance, which may save much time and labor compared to the traditional trial-and-error method. Two examples from practice have demonstrated its validity.