Spherical aberration, coma, and the Abbe sine condition for physicists who don't

design lenses
Alex Small

Citation: American Journal of Physics 86, 487 (2018); doi: 10.1119/1.5036939

View online: https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5036939
View Table of Contents: http://aapt.scitation.org/toc/ajp/86/7
Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers
Spherical aberration, coma, and the Abbe sine condition for physicists
who don’t design lenses
Alex Smalla)
Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona,
California 91768
(Received 4 August 2016; accepted 9 April 2018)
Treatments of lens aberrations tend to be either short and descriptive surveys or detailed theoretical
treatments. In this article, we take an intermediate approach, showing that the mechanism of
spherical aberration can be easily understood on a qualitative level by comparing a sphere with the
ideal lens shape prescribed by the Principle of Least Time, and by using a similar argument to
understand coma aberration. We also use a simple argument from radiant flux conservation to
explain why aberration-free imaging of finite-sized flat objects (as opposed to discrete points or
curves) is impossible with just a single thin lens, and we provide a simple explanation of the Abbe
Sine Condition as a figure of merit in aberration correction. VC 2018 American Association of Physics Teachers.
https://doi.org/10.1119/1.5036939

I. INTRODUCTION
Ideal, stigmatic optical imaging (i.e., imaging such that all
of the rays from one point on an object meet together at one
point in the image) is difficult to achieve in practice and can
be almost as difficult to teach to undergraduates. The typical
optics textbook aimed at undergraduate physics courses
focuses its treatment of geometrical optics primarily (and
largely appropriately) on paraxial rays and thin lenses, as
these limiting cases help beginners form intuition and help
practicing physicists in the initial design of optical experi-
ments. Aberrations are often given a survey treatment in a
single chapter or section,1–4 with the goal of helping the stu-
dent recognize the tell-tale signatures of different aberrations
and get a first exposure to a few concepts that will be useful
in studying more advanced treatments of aberrations. To a
large extent it is quite reasonable not to explore aberration
theory in depth. Lens design is a well-established subject for
specialists,5,6 and is mostly outside the scope of contempo-
rary physics research (although one does still encounter the
occasional fundamental physics investigation centered on
lens design7). Consequently, advanced textbook treatments of
lens aberrations are mostly divided between in-depth theoreti-
cal treatments8,9 and specialized engineering treatments.5,6
Our goal in this article is to explore optical aberrations at
an intermediate level, for the benefit of people who desire
some insight into why aberrations arise via an explanation
deeper than just “The lens has the wrong shape.” We will
explore four key topics without the full mathematical
machinery of aberration theory: The conditions under which
a lens can form a perfect stigmatic image of a point, the
mechanism by which spherical aberration and coma arise
through deviations from those conditions, the reason why a
single thin lens is insufficient for aberration-corrected imag-
ing of a finite-sized flat object, and the relationship between
the Abbe Sine Condition and aberrations.10,11 We will limit
our consideration to spherical aberration and coma for two
reasons. The first, a practical reason, is that it is possible to
analyze the mechanism behind these aberrations while limit-
ing one’s calculations to only those rays in a meridional
plane, i.e., a plane that includes the optic axis and an off-axis
object point. The other aberrations require more detailed cal-
culations for rays propagating outside of that plane, requiring
far more elaborate diagrams. The second reason for limiting
our consideration to spherical aberration and coma is that
these aberrations are, respectively, zeroth and first order in
object height h (i.e., the distance from a point object to the
optic axis) or off-axis angle h (the most appropriate measure
of off-axis deviation for telescopes imaging objects at infin-
ity), and are thus the most significant aberrations (though not
the only significant ones) for many scientifically significant
imaging applications.
II. STIGMATIC IMAGING AND THE MECHANISM
OF SPHERICAL ABERRATION
One can design a curved surface that will stigmatically
image a chosen object point by invoking Fermat’s Principle,
which states that a ray of light will travel from point 1 to
point 2 via a path whose duration (travel time) is an extre-
mum relative to neighboring paths. A well-designed lens
will make it so that all paths that light can take from point 1
to point 2 (via a passage through the lens) will take the same
amount of time, irrespective of where the ray initially strikes
the lens. Consequently, any ray that hits the lens surface after
originating from point 1 will travel to point 2. Our task here
is to determine the shape of such a surface. For convenience,
we will begin our analysis by considering only a single
curved surface. While a real lens consists of a pair of surfa-
ces, we can treat the image produced by one surface as a vir-
tual source for the second surface (as discussed below).
It is particularly convenient to compare a path along the
optic axis with an off-axis path, as in Fig. 1. Since the speed
of light is c in vacuum and c/n in a medium with refractive
index n, the time for light to pass from point 1 to point 2
along the optic axis is (n1s1 þ n2s2)/c. Alternately, we could
consider an off-axis path, which hits the lens a distance r
from the axis and a distance z to the right of the center of the
lens. Equating the time along the two different paths, we get
that
n1 s1 þ n2 s2 n1 l1 þ n2 l2
¼
c qcffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
n1 n2
¼ r 2 þ ðs1 þ zÞ2 þ r 2 þ ðs2  zÞ2 :
c c
(1)

487 Am. J. Phys. 86 (7), July 2018 http://aapt.org/ajp C 2018 American Association of Physics Teachers
V 487

Fig. 1. Imaging by a single curved surface separating media with refractive
indices n1 and n2. The shape of the surface is chosen so that light takes the
same amount of time to traverse from object to image along both the axial
and off-axis paths.
In order to obtain the desired shape of the surface it is nec-
essary to solve for either r as a function of z or vice versa.
The algebraic manipulation involved is tedious (first isolat-
ing one square root and squaring, then isolating another
square root and squaring), and in general gives us a fourth-
order curve known as a Cartesian oval.12,13 Two key excep-
tions to the fourth-order nature of the curve are when the
object or image distance approaches infinity, in which case
we get a hyperbolic surface,14 or when the image is virtual
with magnification n1/n2, in which case the lens shape is a
sphere and the object is said to be at a aplanatic point of the
sphere.15,16 The most important point for our purposes is that
there do exist surfaces which can perform real and stigmatic
imaging of a single point. These surfaces, whether fourth-
order or hyperbolic, are generally referred to as “aspheres,”
to distinguish them from spherical surfaces that are typically
easier to fabricate (and hence are more common in optical
engineering).
Because of spherical surfaces’ greater ease of fabrication,
in many cases the desired aspheric surface is approximated
with a spherical surface that has the same radius of curvature
as the desired aspherical surface in the vicinity of the optic
axis. In Fig. 2, we show the effect on rays that hit an air-
glass interface far from the optic axis: The spherical surface
that they encounter is more curved than the ideal aspherical
surface for the chosen pair of object and image points, and
so they are more strongly deflected than they would be if the
lens were aspherical. This is the origin of the phenomenon of
spherical aberration.
If we zoom out from the scenario in Fig. 2, and look at a
ray-tracing simulation (performed with the software package
OSLO17) of rays striking that spherical surface in Fig. 3, we
see that while rays striking the air-glass interface near the
optic axis nearly intersect each other in the image plane (at
precisely the point where the theory of paraxial optics would
predict for image formation), the rays that strike the interface
farther off-axis experience larger deflections, and therefore
intersect the axis in front of the paraxial image point.
Spherical aberration is thus not just a matter of spherical
surfaces differing from ideal aspherical surfaces (any surface
other than the prescribed one is different), it is specifically a
488 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
Fig. 2. A ray of light (originating in air on the left) intersects a spherical
glass surface with a larger angle of incidence than if it had intersected an
asphere (whose radius of curvature at the optic axis matches that of the
sphere). (Dotted aspheric surface is shown for comparison.) Consequently,
the aberrated rays undergo a larger change in direction than rays striking the
ideal aspheric surface.
consequence of spherical surfaces differing from aspheres in
a systematic manner, being more curved than aspheres across
the entire surface, and with the magnitude of the discrepancy
increasing as one moves farther away from the center. The
result is that rays that strike the lens farther from the optic
axis suffer accordingly larger deflections from their ideal
path. The fact that the discrepancy becomes larger farther
away from the axis is made clear in Fig. 2. Near the axis
(where paraxial rays propagate) the spherical and aspherical
surfaces are nearly identical, but farther from the axis the
spherical surface systematically deviates from the prescribed
aspherical shape. This also partly explains why spherical sur-
faces are of practical utility in optics, as spherical surfaces
are nearly indistinguishable from aspherical surfaces close to
the axis. (An additional justification for the utility of spheri-
cal surfaces will be offered in Sec. IV.)
To this point we have only considered imaging by a single
aspherical surface (imaging from one medium to another),
and the attendant spherical aberration that occurs when it is
approximated with a spherical surface. In practice, however,
lenses typically have two surfaces, and are usually designed
to image from air to air, or from some other medium to either
air or vacuum (the media in which camera sensors are typi-
cally embedded in the image plane), not from air to glass.
The second surface is designed to take rays that were
directed to a point on the right (treated as a virtual object
here) and redirect them to a different point (often but not
always a closer point) in a medium different from the mate-
rial of the lens. In order to derive the appropriate shape for
the second surface, however, it may be conceptually simpler
to consider virtual imaging of real objects, instead of real
Fig. 3. Rays of light (originating from an on-axis point object in air on the
left) intersect a spherical glass surface (refractive index n ¼ 1.5) and enter
the glass medium. Rays striking the interface near the optic axis are focused
very close to the paraxial image point, while rays striking the interface far-
ther off-axis undergo large deflections, the signature of spherical aberration.
Simulations were performed in OSLO and exported to graphics software for
color editing and insertion of text.
Alex Small 488
imaging of virtual objects. Such a scenario is illustrated in
Fig. 4.
Rays of light originating from the object point on the right
travel on the left as though they are all diverging from the
same image point; this is the definition of a virtual image. If
we look at a spherical surface centered on the image point
(i.e., a wavefront) then all of the rays will have taken the
same amount of time to reach that surface, just as rays
diverging from a point would have taken the same amount
of time to reach that surface. The time taken may not be the
actual time that would be required to get from the image
point on the left to the wavefront on the right if the light
were traveling in a uniform medium with refractive index
n2, but it will at least be the same for all paths. We can
therefore write
n1 l1 þ n2 DO n1 s1 þ n2 DA
¼ : (2)
c c
As it stands, Eq. (2) does not specify a lens shape because in
addition to the object-lens surface distances l1 it also contains
the off-axis and axial distances DO and DA. However, because
the wavefront is diverging spherically from the image point it
follows that the time to get from the image point to the wave-
front surface would also be path-independent (if the medium
were uniform), giving us the following relationship:
n2 l2 þ n2 DO n2 s2 þ n2 DA
¼ : (3)
c c
Equation (3) also does not specify a lens shape, as it also con-
tains the off-axis and axial distances DO and DA. Fortunately,
if we subtract Eq. (3) from Eq. (2) we eliminate DO and DA,
leaving
n1 l1  n2 l2 n1 s1  n2 l2
¼ : (4)
c c
This equation is indeed sufficient to specify the shape of the
right lens surface, and it is indeed a Cartesian oval, just like
the left lens surface. We can thus obtain stigmatic imaging of
a single point (i.e., imaging without spherical aberration) if
we use a lens whose surfaces are Cartesian ovals. Moreover,
Fig. 4. Formation of a virtual image by a single curved surface separating
media with refractive indices n1 and n2. The shape of the surface is chosen
so that rays traversing both the on-axis and off-axis paths take the same
amount time to reach the wavefront (a circular surface centered on the image
point).
489 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
the same argument as above applies if one approximates the
right surface with a spherical surface: The spherical surface
will be more curved than a Cartesian oval, and will hence
bend rays more strongly toward the optic axis, resulting in
spherical aberration.
Interestingly, while both surfaces will be Cartesian ovals
in a lens designed for stigmatic imaging, we have some free-
dom in designing those surfaces: The left surface must be
designed to image from the left object point to some other
point, but we have latitude in choosing that second point.
Whatever second point we pick, the right surface must take
rays that were aimed at that point and bring them to the
desired image point on the right. This degree of freedom will
become important in Sec. IV, when considering designs that
minimize aberrations.
III. THE MECHANISM OF COMA ABERRATION
IS RELATED TO SPHERICAL ABERRATION
The key signature of the spherical aberration discussed
above is that it can occur even for rays originating from an
object on the optic axis. If the object is not on the optic axis,
however, there are many more things that can “go wrong,”
i.e., many more ways in which rays can fail to intersect at a
single object point. A full understanding of the multitude of
possible aberrations would require consideration of rays
propagating in many different planes. However, the basic
mechanism of one important aberration (called “coma,” for
reasons that will soon become apparent) can be qualitatively
understood by considering rays in the plane containing the
off-axis object and the axis through the center of the lens. It
turns out that the mechanism of coma aberration is closely
related to the mechanism of spherical aberration discussed
above.
In Fig. 5, we show four rays from an off-axis object: two
extreme rays hitting the interface far above or below the axis,
and two paraxial rays hitting the interface close to the axis.
The paraxial rays, of course, combine to form an image with
few noticeable aberrations. The extreme rays, however, will
exhibit noticeable aberrations. The curved interface does not
“know” (at the risk of anthropomorphizing a lens) that these
two rays come from off-axis points. The rays are propagating
as though they came from on-axis points (denoted A and B for
the top and bottom rays, respectively). Consequently, they
experience spherical aberration, and get deflected toward the
axis more steeply than they would ideally (in the absence
Fig. 5. Paraxial and extremal rays from an off-axis object pass through a
lens, and because they either pass through the axis or can be extrapolated to
the axis they experience spherical aberration, being deflected away from
their ideal paths and toward the axis.
Alex Small 489

Fig. 6. (a) Ray of light (originating from axial and off-axis point objects in
air on the left) intersect a spherical glass surface (refractive index n ¼ 1.5)
and enter the glass medium. The image plane was chosen to minimize the
spot size in the image of the axial point object. The image of the axial point
is symmetric, consistent with spherical aberration, while the image of the off-
axis point is asymmetric in the manner of coma aberration. (b) A spot dia-
gram (pattern of rays in the image plane) corresponding to the off-axis
(bottom right in part (a)) image. The vertical asymmetry in the distribution of
rays, with somewhat more rays in the upper portion of the image, is a signa-
ture of coma aberration.
of spherical aberration). This results in an asymmetry in the
distribution of arriving rays in the image plane. The same
asymmetry is present in quantitatively accurate ray-tracing cal-
culations in Fig. 6(a).
This asymmetry is also apparent in the propagation of rays
outside of the plane containing the object point and the optic
axis, as shown in Fig. 6(b). The extreme top and bottom rays
in Fig. 5 define the top and bottom of a pattern of rays strik-
ing the edge of the interface, and because they are not posi-
tioned symmetrically with respect to the paraxial image
point the result is a comet-shaped image (hence the name
“coma”).
Fig. 7. (a) Schematic of a lens, showing the radii of curvature and the thickness. Note that by convention the right surface has a negative radius of curvature if
it is convex to the left. (b) Polar coordinate system used to describe the point where a ray intersects the left surface of a lens.
490 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
IV. ABERRATION CORRECTION
While some amount of aberration is almost inevitable in
lenses (especially spherical lenses), the magnitude of the
problem posed by aberrations is often (at least partially) cor-
rectable. In this section, we will discuss what it means to cor-
rect an aberration. We will find that standard correction
formulas for coma and spherical aberration give rise to very
similar lens shapes, consistent with our point about the com-
mon mechanism of these two aberrations.
If we consider the common case of a glass lens whose sur-
faces are spherical and whose object and image planes are
both in air, the designer still has (at least) three parameters
indicated in Fig. 7(a): The radii of curvature (R1 and R2) of
the left and right surfaces, and the lens thickness d (measured
from the left surface to the right surface, along the central
axis of the lens). There are many combinations of these
parameters that can give the same focal length f, as the focal
length is given by the lens maker’s equation
 
1 1 1 ðn  1Þd
ð
¼ n1 Þ  þ ; (5)
f R1 R2 nR1 R2
where n is the refractive index of the lens (the refractive
index of air is assumed to be very close to 1) and the radius
is positive if the surface bulges out to the left and negative if
the surface bulges to the right. Given that we have flexibility
in choosing R1 and R2, our goal is to choose them so as to
minimize the spot size.
In order to minimize the spot size, we need a quantitative
model to predict a (possibly aberrated) ray’s arrival position
h2 in the image plane in terms of the object’s location in the
object plane (h1), the lens’ shape (i.e., radii of curvature R1
and R2, thickness d), the imaging conditions (i.e., distances
s1 and s2 from object point to lens and from object to axis),
and where the ray hits the lens (describable in terms of a dis-
tance r and an angle / in the plane of the lens, as shown in
Fig. 7(b)). Treatises on aberration theory outline elaborate
formulas to describe these quantitative relationships. What
matters here is that these formulas can be broken down into
series expansions, and each term in the series has a different
quantitative and qualitative form, corresponding to different
aberrations and hence to different shapes in the image plane.
The first few terms in the series for h2 are
h2 ¼ mh1 þ C30 r3 þ C21 r 2 h1 ð2 þ cos 2/Þ þ    : (6)
The first term corresponds to the predictions of paraxial
optics, telling us that a ray will arrive in the image plane a
distance mh1 from the axis, where m is the magnification of
the image.
Alex Small 490
 The next term, proportional to r3, is independent of h1,
which tells us that it will affect imaging of any object, regard-
less of its location with respect to the axis. The value of C30
depends on the magnification m, the radii of curvature R1 and
R2, the lens thickness d, and the refractive indices of the left
medium, lens material, and right medium. Qualitatively, this
term describes the effects of spherical aberration, but the
more formal name for it is “third order spherical aberration,”
because it is a cubic term (r3). If one were to do more detailed
calculations one would get additional terms proportional to
r5, r7, etc. that are required if one wishes to more accurately
predict the full effects of spherical aberration.
The third term’s dependence on h1 indicates that it only
applies to off-axis objects. The angular dependence gives
rise to asymmetry in the image, just as in the case of coma
aberration, and the coefficient C21 describes the magnitude
of coma effects. However, just as the r3 term formally
describes only third order spherical aberration, the h1r2 term
formally describes a phenomenon referred to as “third order
coma” (as it involves three powers of distances, r2 and h1).
As with spherical aberration, one could compute higher-
order terms (proportional to r4h1, r6h1, etc.) that give rise to
a similar pattern in the image plane and provide additional
quantitative corrections.
The task of a lens designer is to choose R1, R2, d, and the
lens material in such a way as to minimize at least some of
the coefficients in these series, for given object and image
distances. We will not derive the forms of such coefficients,
but will simply quote other authors. Jenkins and White18
showed that (for a lens thin enough that a paraxial ray’s dis-
tance r from the axis does not change appreciably while tra-
versing the lens) minimizing the effects of spherical
aberration, i.e., minimizing the value of C30, requires
   radii of curvature of the many surfaces used in a multi-lens
R2 þ R1 2ðn2  1Þ s2  s1
¼ : (7)
R2  R1 nþ2 s2 þ s1
The minus sign on the right side of Eq. (7) is directly
related to the common guideline19 that when a lens is used to
produce a magnified image (i.e., s2 – s1 > 0) the flatter side
of the lens should face the object while the more curved side
faces the image (so that R1 > 0 and jR1 j > jR2 j). One intui-
tive way of explaining this guideline is that this lens orienta-
tion minimizes the angle between rays from the object and
the normal to the lens surface, and thus reduces the effects of
aberrations.
Jenkins and White also showed20 that for a thin lens third
order coma can be eliminated, i.e., C21 can be set to zero, if
 2   was grounded in the Principle of Least Time. We will now
R2 þ R1 2n  n  1 s2  s1
¼ : (8)
R2  R1 nþ1 s 2 þ s1
In both of these formulas, s2  s1 =s2 þ s1 is called the “scale
factor,”21 and R2 þ R1 =R2  R1 is called the Coddington
shape factor. We can thus compare the prescribed lens
shapes (q values) for the two different aberration corrections
at a given magnification if we compute the ratio ðR2 þ R1 =
R2  R1 Þðs2 þ s1 =s2  s1 Þ (shape factor divided by scale fac-
tor). (We choose to examine this ratio so that on the right
side we are comparing factors that only depend on the type
of aberration under consideration but not the specifics of
the imaging situation.) In Fig. 8, we show that the ratio of
shape factor to scale factor required for correcting spherical
491 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
Fig. 8. Coddington shape factor q þ 1=q  1 divided by scale factor s2  s1 =
s2 þ s1 for correction of coma and spherical aberration, plotted as a function
of lens refractive index n for values typical of optical glasses.
aberration is, for typical values of the refractive indices of
lens materials, very close to that required for correcting third
order coma. This is in keeping with our observation above
that the mechanism of coma aberration is directly related to
spherical aberration.
Finally, the fact that radii of curvature can be chosen in
such a way as to at least partially mitigate aberrations is an
additional reason (aside from ease of fabrication) why spher-
ical lens surfaces are so frequently used. Not only do spheri-
cal surfaces provide satisfactory performance for paraxial
rays, but also for non-paraxial rays a series of spherical sur-
faces can be designed to mitigate aberrations. Indeed, profes-
sionally designed lens systems typically consist of several
lenses in series, with each lens’ pair of surfaces providing
degrees of freedom for a designer seeking to mitigate aberra-
tion effects. There is no simple analytical theory to predict
the final arrival point of a ray in the image plane from the
design, but with professional ray-tracing software the arrival
point can be efficiently computed, and optimization algo-
rithms can be applied to search parameter space for a high-
quality design. The design process may be challenging, but
the fabrication of the spherical surfaces is a manufacturing
task that has been refined over the years.
V. THIN LENSES, RADIANT FLUX
CONSERVATION, AND OFF-AXIS ABERRATIONS
In Secs. I–IV, we established the mechanisms of spherical
aberration and coma by computing the ideal lens shape for
stigmatic imaging between a pair of points and examining
the effect of deviations from that ideal shape. That argument
use the principle that the total power collected from an object
by a lens should equal the power focused to an image by a
lens (more formally known as “radiant flux conservation”) to
argue that simple thin lenses cannot produce sigmatic and
real images of a flat object of non-zero size. This argument is
not a rigorous proof, and is not sufficient to exclude the pos-
sibility of multi-element lenses without off-axis aberrations,
but it does serve to motivate two important points in optics:
First, in practice, high-quality imaging is accomplished with
a series of lenses, i.e., even a lens for which the thin lens
approximation is accurate may not be the optimal lens for a
given task in imaging. Second, as a general theoretical result,
when stigmatic imaging of a finite-size region is possible it
is only possible for a curved surface, not a flat one.22
Alex Small 491
 Suppose that on the left side of a lens we have a circular
object of radius h1 radiating light isotropically in all direc-
tions, as shown in Fig. 9. Conservation of radiant flux is
related to the conservation of a quantity called etendue, which
is proportional to the product of surface area and solid angle
for light propagating in an optical system. In an optical system
without scattering (which increases the number of paths light
can follow, and thus increases etendue) or absorption (which
decreases the amount of light in a system), etenude is con-
served.23,24 The qualitative interpretation of etendue conserva-
tion is that if we compute the optical power passing through a
surface (by multiplying the area of the surface and the range
of angles from which light is coming), and then see what hap-
pens to the rays of light that hit that surface as they continue
traveling, expanding the area covered by the light rays means
that each element of surface area receives light from a smaller
range of angles. Conversely, focusing the light to a smaller
area means that each element of the surface gets light from a
wider range of angles.
In the limit of an object small enough that the maximum
collection angle is approximately the same for all points on
the object, the etendue can be computed as
ð Equations (12) and (14) cannot be simultaneously satisfied
G1 ¼ ph21 cos hn21 dX
ð h1;max
¼ 2p2 h21 n21 cos h sin hdh ¼ p2 h21 n21 sin2 h1;max :
0 image a flat region of non-zero area in the non-paraxial
(9)
The factor of ph21 cos h is the apparent surface area of the
object to a section of the lens that is viewing the object at an
angle h. Even if every point on the object is emitting iso-
tropically, a surface element on the lens is “seeing” the
object from an angle, and the cross-section presented to the
lens (which determines the integrated flux of energy through
the surface) will be ph21 cos h. The factor of n21 in front of the
differential element of solid angle reflects the fact that the
solid angle spanned by a bundle of rays can change due to
refraction.
We will assume stigmatic imaging, i.e., all of the rays from
each point on the object on the left side will be focused to
corresponding image points on the right side. Consequently,
the etendue on the right can be computed in the same manner
as on the left
G2 ¼ p2 h22 n22 sin2 h2;max : (10)
Equating etendue on the left and right gives (after some sim-
ple algebraic manipulation)
Fig. 9. Object and image sizes and ray angles for imaging of a finite-sized
object.
492 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
n1 h1 sin h1;max ¼ n2 h2 sin h2;max ; (11)
or
h2 n1 sin h1;max
¼ : (12)
h1 n2 sin h2;max
Equation (11) is an example of the Abbe Sine Condition (dis-
cussed in Sec. VI).
Unfortunately, this is not a requirement that a thin lens
can satisfy, as we will now show. The fact that it is thin
means that a ray enters and exits the lens at the same distance
r from the optic axis, so we have
r ¼ s1 tan h1;max ¼ s2 tan h2;max : (13)
Because the magnification of a thin lens is proportional to
h2/h1 ¼ n1s2/n2s1, we can rewrite Eq. (13) as
h2 n1 tan h1;max
¼ : (14)
h1 n2 tan h2;max
unless either n1/n2 ¼ h2/h1 (a special case) or tan h1;max
 sin h1;max and tan h2;max  sin h2;max (i.e., the paraxial
case). Thus, aside from the special case of magnification
equal to the index ratio a single thin lens cannot stigmatically
regime, because the area over which the lens would spread
the collected light does not correspond to the magnification
that one would calculate in the paraxial regime from object
and image distances.
VI. THE ABBE SINE CONDITION
As mentioned above, Eqs. (11) and (12) are examples of a
more general condition called the Abbe Sine Condition
(ASC), sometimes also called the Optical Sine Theorem,2
which should be satisfied in a well-designed imaging system.
If this condition is to hold irrespective of the lens aperture
(i.e., we should be able to place an adjustable pupil in our
system to vary the range of rays that the lens receives) then
we can write it slightly more generally as
n1 h1 sin h1 ¼ n2 h2 sin h2 ; (15)
or
h2 n1 sin h1
¼ : (16)
h1 n2 sin h2
There are three basic questions to ask about the ASC:
What is its physical origin, what is its physical meaning, and
why is it a result worthy of attention?
In regard to the source of the ASC, it can be derived via sev-
eral distinct lines of reasoning, including Fermat’s Principle in
geometrical optics,1,9 wave optics,4,11 and even the resolution
of a celebrated thermodynamic paradox involving focused
light.24,25 The fact that the same conclusion can be reached by
reasoning from at least three different sets of premises indi-
cates that the result is a deep one worthy of further investiga-
tion. For full, careful derivations it is best to examine the
aforementioned references; here we will briefly mention the
basic ideas of the geometrical and wave derivations.
Alex Small 492
 In the context of geometrical optics, it can be derived from
an assumption that the lens has been designed for stigmatic
imaging of an axial object point. One considers how the travel
time changes when the object and image points move off-axis
and the ray’s path is varied, and requires that the travel time
be the same for all paths. When derived from wave optics, the
ASC amounts to a relationship between magnification and
spatial frequency (since the spatial frequency of a light wave
is proportional to n sin h). If we produce a magnified image
(h2/h1 > 1) then the length scales in the image must be propor-
tionately larger and thus the spatial frequencies in the image
(proportional to n2 sin h2 ) must be proportionally smaller than
the spatial frequencies in the object (n1 sin h1 ).
Regardless of the approach that one uses to derive the
ASC, its basic optical content is a requirement that for stig-
matic imaging of off-axis points the magnification ratio h2/h1
should be the same for all rays, irrespective of the angle h1 at
which they were traveling in medium 1. It follows that the
ratio n1 sin h1 =n2 sin h2 should also be the same for all rays.
The ASC thus relates an intuitive requirement that the mag-
nification of an image should be the same regardless of
where the rays hit the lens surface to a less intuitive state-
ment about the sines of angles made by rays.
While the requirement on the sines of angles may not be
intuitive, it has a very practical application. Aberrations gen-
erally have their worst effects for the ray striking the edge of
the lens at the largest angle, commonly known as the
“marginal ray.” In Fig. 5, the marginal ray is the bottom ray,
passing through point B. The ASC thus gives the optical engi-
neer a simple and quantitative target: Optimize a lens combi-
nation so that for the marginal ray the ratio n1 sin h1 =n2 sin h2
is as close as possible to the magnification h2/h1. Some work-
ers even refer to the discrepancy between the magnification
and the ratio of sines n1 sin h1 =n2 sin h2 as the “Offense
Against Sine Condition” (OSC) and use it as a design metric.
In fact, one can relate the OSC to the magnitude of coma
aberration, and derive Eq. (8) from the requirement that the
OSC be zero.6
Additionally, the ASC gives a method for quantifying the
order of the aberration in a system. For any ray (not just the
marginal ray) we can write the angle h2 on the right as a func-
tion of h1 or vice-versa, and then express n1 sin h1 =n2 sin h2
as a power series in one of those angles. The zeroth order
term should be equal to the magnification, and the goal for
the coefficients of higher order terms is to either set them to
zero or else minimize them. Though we referred to “third
order coma” in Sec. IV, the cancellation of a factor in the
ratio of odd functions (sines) means that the second order
term in n1 sin h1 =n2 sin h2 arises from the third order term in
the expansion of the sine, and hence is related to third order
coma. If that coefficient is zero then third order coma has
been eliminated.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
The chief purpose of this article is to meet the needs of an
instructor who is not a specialist in geometrical optics but
nonetheless wishes to explain aberrations to students on
some level more sophisticated than merely noting that most
lenses have the wrong shape. The key concept is that the
shape of a spherical lens is not just incorrect but systemati-
cally incorrect, so that rays striking the surface farther off-
axis are systematically bent more sharply away from the
path that would be prescribed for stigmatic imaging. This
493 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
problem affects images formed by any object point, whether
on-axis or off-axis, and the coma aberration affecting images
of off-axis objects thus arises from the same mechanism as
the spherical aberration affecting images of on-axis objects.
Fortunately, while a spherical lens does not have the proper
shape for stigmatic imaging, a spherical lens does have two
degrees of freedom, and a system of several lenses has pro-
portionately more. Therefore, even if the focal length of the
system is held constant there are still unconstrained degrees
of freedom, so it is possible to either minimize spherical aber-
ration or eliminate coma while holding the focal length and
magnification constant. One means for evaluating the quality
of an optical design is the Abbe Sine Condition, which relates
the angle of a marginal ray (as well as any other ray) to the
system’s magnification. The ASC is a rather deep concept,
being derivable from several distinct lines of reasoning, but it
can also be motivated by a simple calculation that illustrates
a shortcoming of a single thin lens, namely, that it cannot
conserve radiant flux while imaging stigmatically. This pre-
sentation is not intended as a substitute for intensive training
in optical engineering, but it is hoped that it might serve as a
starting point for those who wish to pursue geometrical optics
beyond the coverage typically given in physics classes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I thank my students for being patient as I have tried to
teach aberrations and ray tracing to the best of my ability
(hopefully improving each year). I thank my many colleagues
in the Optical Society of Southern California for showing me
just how rich of a subject geometrical optics can be.
a)
Electronic mail: arsmall@cpp.edu
1
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2
E. Hecht, Optics (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 2002).
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For instance, Ref. 3 p. 446. This guideline is often found in manuals pro-
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plano-convex lens, which is used to focus a collimated beam, produces a
Alex Small 493

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20
Ref. 1, p. 165.
21
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take a limit. In the case of an object at infinity, s2  s1 =s2 þ s1 ! 1, and
for an image at infinity s2  s1 =s2 þ s1 ! 1.
494 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 86, No. 7, July 2018
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Alex Small 494