Aberration correction of zoom lenses using evolutionary programming.

A systematic approach for the aberration correction of zoom systems is presented. It is assumed that the powers and movements of the components of the zoom systems are known. Each component is considered as a system of thin lenses in contact. An evolutionary algorithm is developed to explore the multivariate hyperspace of design variables formed by spherical aberration, central coma, and longitudinal chromatic aberration of each component for infinite conjugate. The primary aberrations for each component at any zoom position are deduced from three central aberration coefficients of the component for infinite conjugate using conjugate shift formulas. Overall system aberrations of the zoom systems are determined by using stop shift formulas. In most of the zoom lens systems it is important to achieve stability in the primary aberrations of the system over the zoom range. This is facilitated by proper formulation of the merit function for the optimization process. Investigations have been carried out on four-component zoom lenses, and an ab initio structure of a four-component zoom lens is presented.