The Fresnel lens is one of the most extensively studied components in both
classical and integrated optics. This structure is free from axial spherica
l aberration, but is heavily affected by both off-axis and chromatic aberra
tions. The latter can be compensated by introducing a refractive component,
whose chromatic behavior is the opposite of that of the di diffractive len
s. This hybrid refractive-diffractive structure, however, is not able to de
al effectively with oft-axis aberrations, namely, with coma. In this work,
a novel methodology for the design of corrected hybrid lenses is proposed w
hich allows for correction of both chromatism and coma. The design: method
is based on a ray-optics variational approach which provides a range of pos
sible achromatic solutions. An optimization procedure is performed by means
of a series of beam propagation method numerical calculations which make i
t possible to simulate the lens operation and thus to find the best solutio
n.