Characterization of the optical aberrations of a metrological UV microscope

In light microscopy, optical aberrations always affect the performance of the employed microscope. They can emerge from imperfect optical components of the microscope, like lenses, or from misalignments of such optical components, which may even change over time. In our contribution, we retrieve the optical aberrations in form of Zernike polynomials from measurements of small point structures by applying the extended Nijboer-Zernike approach. Subsequently, we include the expression for these optical aberrations in rigorous simulations of the microscope’s imaging process. Finally, we will compare the simulations with measurements to demonstrate optical bidirectional measurements on aberrant imaging systems.