On the relation between the wave aberration function and the phase transfer function for an incoherent imaging system with circular pupil

The consideration is carried out in its general formulation: the wave aberration function is represented in terms of classical aberrations (the Zernike polynomials), the phase transfer function (argument of the complex optical transfer function) is defined by a chain of transformations originating from the generalized pupil function. Quasi-analytical quadrature formulas are derived that link the optical transfer function and the phase transfer function with the aberration terms. It is shown that the phase transfer function contains information on the odd-order aberrations, which can be retrieved from coefficients to the Taylor expansion of the derived quadrature relation. Received 16 June 2001