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Calculating optical path lengths in optical systems.

Calculating optical path lengths in optical systems.

Calculating optical path lengths in optical systems.

(OP)
Dear All,

I am a physicist and I have a question I would like to ask to optical engineers.

I have designed an optical system using Zemax. In order to understand what the system does, I would like to compare the behaviour of the real ray tracing given by Zemax with a simple analytical calculation using paraxial optics.

Please, correct me if I am wrong, but if the optimized system is diffraction limited, I would expect its behaviour to be nearly paraxial. Therefore, it would make sense to compare the real ray tracing results with those given by ABDC matrices propagation.

What I really want to understand is how the optical path length of a single ray depends on the parameters of the system. I can calculate this quantity using ABCD matrices, but I haven't been able to predict the optical path length calculated by Zemax using real tracing.

If the system is diffraction limited, should I expect its behaviour to be close of the paraxial equivalent?

Thanks in advance.

Fepa

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