Third-order aberration of soft X-ray optical systems with orthogonal and coplanar arrangement of the main planes of elements.

A third-order aberration analytical analysis method of soft X-ray optical systems with orthogonal and coplanar arrangement of the main planes of elements is proposed. Firstly, the transfer equations of the aperture ray and the principle ray are derived; then, based on the third-order aberration theory with the aperture-ray coordinates on the reference exit wavefront of a plane-symmetric optical system, the aberration expressions contributed by the wave aberration and defocus of this kind of optical system are studied in detail. Finally, the derived aberration calculation expressions are applied to calculate the aberration of two design examples of such types of optical systems; the images are compared with ray-tracing results obtained using the Shadow software to validate the aberration expressions. The study shows that the accuracy of the aberration expressions is satisfactory. The analytical analysis method of aberration is helpful in the design and optimization of the soft X-ray optical systems with orthogonal and coplanar arrangement of the main planes of optical elements.