766 BOOK REVIEWS Vol.

53

Stigmatic Ebert-Type Plane Grating Mounting

W. T. WELFORD
Physics Department, Imperial College of Science and Technology,
London, S.W.7, England
(Received 23 November 1962)

E BERT-TYPE mountings for plane grating monochromators

have revived in popularity since the availability of large,
high-quality plane gratings. By an Ebert-type mounting we mean
a system in which the grating rotates about a vertical axis to scan
the spectrum, the combined collimator and telescope spherical
mirror faces the grating at roughly its focal distance, and the
entrance and exit slits are approximately in the plane of the
grating and symmetrically disposed with respect to it. There are
then two possibilities, (a) the two slits are, respectively, above and
below the grating, in line with its rotation axis and (b) the slits
are on either side of the grating, at the same level. We may call
(a) the off-plane Ebert and (b) the in-plane Ebert.
Both the off-plane and in-plane mountings are coma free, by
symmetry, but there is considerable astigmatism even when the
relative aperture is low enough to make spherical aberration negli-
gible. The elegant in-plane Ebert due to Fastie 1 produces a sharp
line image, which is still astigmatic, by arranging the slits on a
concentric circle. However, all in-plane systems have the dis-
advantage that part of the spectrum may fall on to the grating
and give rise to stray light; special arrangements, such as pre-
filtering, have to be made to prevent this. The off-plane mountings
do not have this disadvantage, since the spectrum falls above or
below the grating, but then it is not possible to get a sharp line
focus at reasonably short focal ratios because the exit slit has to be
curved (on account of the spectrum line curvature) and the
astigmatic focal lines cannot be made to lie in line with the slit;
the same applies, of course, if the entrance slit is curved instead,
and the result is that the astigmatism has a slight broadening
effect on the spectrum line.
It does not seem to have been noticed that this difficulty can be
circumvented if the mirror is made as a paraboloid instead of a
sphere. If a paraboloid is used with the aperture stop at the focus
and with one infinite conjugate, then it follows from the primary
aberration equations that the astigmatism is zero; since the ar-
rangement is symmetrical in the present application there is no
coma and thus in Seidel approximation the system is perfectly
stigmatic. There would, of course, be some field curvature which
might have to be taken into account by curving the plane of the
slits at very short focal ratios.
Such a system, comprising a plane grating with its axis of ro-
tation in line with the two slits and a paraboloid mirror, would
thus have no point aberrations; it would give sharp line images
even with curved slits, and it would eliminate the stray light due
to the spectrum striking the grating.
1
W. G. Fastie. J. Opt. Soc. Am. 42, 647 (1952).