Convergence and differentiation of Zernike expansion: application for an analysis of odd-order surfaces

Abstract

Abstract.  Odd-order surfaces have begun to be used in optics. In order to investigate the aberration characteristics of such surfaces, Zernike expansion is widely used since it directly and explicitly corresponds to wavefront aberrations. Since the Zernike expansion of an odd-order surface contains an infinite number of terms, the convergence of the expanded sum and the possibility of termwise derivatives are not explicitly guaranteed mathematically. We give a complete proof for these problems. For an application of this result, we analyze the aberration characteristics of odd-order surfaces and present their effectiveness in optical design.