Herbert Gross, born in 1955, joined Carl Zeiss in 1982 after finishing his physics degree as specialist for optical design. Since 1995 he has been working as head of the department of optical design, while also teaching as a lecturer in Aalen and Lausanne. The new handbook is an intuitive, didactically elegant approach to the subject of optical systems and is not competed by any other work on the market. The selected board of authors, all reputed industrial experts, guarantee the timeliness of the well coordinated, coherent chapters. The third volume of this reference focuses on the theory of aberrations in imaging systems and their correction. By deriving and applying image quality criteria, the reader is introduced into the fundamental principles to develop an optical system by first principles and optimization. The basic relationships between system setup and aberrations are explained and the mathematical background to understand the optimization algorithms is presented. The practical use of these tools is demonstrated in a comprehensive demonstration of a concrete development task.

Modern special features to improve optical systems by new technologies like aspheres, gradient lenses, diffractive elements of general geometries are treated in detail. The practical aspects of tolerancing and assembling of optical systems are finally discussed. The appendix contains a short introduction into the software package OPTALIX as an advanced solution tool for practical work.