Aberration-free optical systems for the formation of extended three-dimensional images of particle ensembles

Holographic recording of three-dimensional ensembles of small particles req uire objectives of unit magnification producing diffraction images of point s of a three-dimensional object space. The possibility of magnifying a spac e imaged without aberrations is analyzed as applied to the problem of recor ding three-dimensional ensembles of particles. It is found that the conditi on for aberration-free formation of three-dimensional images consists not o nly in the elimination of aberrations for a pair of conjugate object and im age planes, but also in the correction of aberrations in pupils. The utiliz ation of concentric mirror-lens objectives is shown to be a promising solut ion to this problem. Objectives with a numerical aperture of 0.1 and a reso lution of 3.2 mu m, which provide a volume of space imaged without aberrati ons up to 10(3) cm(3), are calculated. (C) 2000 MAIK "Nauka/Interperiodica" .