Design of unobscured reflective zoom system with three mirrors

A method for the design of an unobscured reflective zoom system with three mirrors is described. This method applies the vector aberration theory, which helps designers analyze third-order aberrations for optical systems with decentered and tilted surfaces. As the vector aberration theory presents the variation of third-order aberrations in asymmetric systems through analytic expressions, real ray tracing is unnecessary. Hence, the design with vector aberration theory is faster, and the analytic expressions are more comprehensive and intuitive. To demonstrate the practicability of the method, a design example is given, which shows that the presented method can guide designers achieve a good unobscured reflective zoom system with three mirrors.