Poletto Luca, Thomas Roger J
Laboratory for UV and X-Ray Optical Research, Department of Information Engineering, Instituto Nazionale per la Fisica della Materia, University of Padova, via Gradenigo 6/B-35131, Padova, Italy.
Appl Opt. 2004 Apr 1;43(10):2029-38. doi: 10.1364/ao.43.002029.
Performances are presented of three classes of imaging slit spectrometers for extended sources with aberration-corrected gratings. A general analytical expression for minimizing off-axis grating aberrations is obtained, and it is demonstrated that these aberrations are minimized when the spectrometer is operated at a magnification higher than unity. Classical designs with toroidal uniform-line-spaced (TULS) or spherical varied-line-space (SVLS) gratings are compared with a new class of designs that utilize toroidal varied-line-space (TVLS) gratings. Although TULS and SVLS designs with two stigmatic points can be designed to operate at near-unity magnification with excellent on-axis spectral and spatial resolutions, they cannot be made to satisfy the general off-axis condition, and so their off-axis performances are not optimum. On the contrary TVLS designs with two stigmatic points can be operated at almost any magnification, thus satisfying the off-axis condition perfectly. Such designs are suitable for imaging spectrometer observations that require an extended field of view.
