ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the design, manufacture and handling of the components of optical systems used for manipulating laser radiation. Commonalities and analogies between classical and laser-based optics, which are plentiful, will be addressed if needed for completeness or clarity. In a classical radiation source, each spot on the source emits radiation independently of all others and is the origin of a spherical wave, which propagates into a hemisphere. The centre of this diverging hemispherical wave locates the source as an object and its radius of curvature is proportional to the distance from the object. Standard ray-tracing algorithms include the computation of the optical path difference, the difference between the optical path lengths along the ray and a reference (chief-)ray. The aberrations caused by the passage through the individual surfaces will be mapped into that emerging wavefront and will show up as deformations with respect to its ideal shape.
