Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 10
Claim 1
Independent Claim
132 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane, the method comprising the steps of: providing a reticle consisting of a multiplicity of separate and distinguishable points in the reticle plane; providing an aperture plate at a distance from the reticle having at least one opening; imaging at least a portion of the reticle through the at least one opening in the aperture plate to create a multiplicity of spots at the image plane, the multiplicity of spots having spot centroids relative to the separate and distinguishable points in the reticle deviated from diffraction limited positions by an average of grad φ(u)) over the diffraction limited positions of the spots produced by a diffraction limited lens train.
Claim 2
Independent Claim
132 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane, the method comprising the steps of: providing a reticle consisting of a multiplicity of separate and distinguishable points in the reticle plane; providing an aperture plate at a distance from the reticle having at least one opening; imaging at least a portion of the reticle through the at least one opening in the aperture plate to create a multiplicity of spots at the image plane, the multiplicity of spots having spot centroids relative to the separate and distinguishable points in the reticle deviated from diffraction limited positions by an average of grad φ(u)) over the diffraction limited positions of the spots produced by a diffraction limited lens train.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
53 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 1, the method comprising the further step of: the at least one opening in the aperture plate sampling a discrete portion of the lens train only.
Claim 4
Dependent Claim
90 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 1, the method comprising the further step of: the multiplicity of separate and distinguishable points being spread out over an area of size 2*NAo*za with ray bundles having chief rays covering the entire entrance pupil where NAo is the numerical aperture of the imaging objective on the object side and za is the separation between the aperture plate plane and the reticle plane.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim
46 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 3, the method comprising the further step of: the numerical aperture NAo being the aperture of the entrance pupil.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
64 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 1, the method comprising the further step of: measuring the deviations of the centroids of the multiplicity of spots from their diffraction limited positions to obtain the average values of grad φ(u)) sampled over the entrance pupil.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
61 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 5, the method comprising the further step of: reconstructing an aberrated wavefront corresponding to the multiplicity of points in the reticle plane that passed through the at least one opening in the aperture plate.
Claim 8
Dependent Claim
47 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 6, the method comprising the further step of: identifying the reconstructed wavefront φ(u) with a single field point position (x,y).
Claim 9
Dependent Claim
73 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 1, the method comprising the further step of: analyzing the wavefront at a multiplicity of openings in the aperture plate over the entire lens train with each opening being centered underneath a neighborhood of points that is accepted into the entrance pupil of the imaging objective.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim
65 words
A method for analysis of a lens train for taking an image from a reticle plane and relaying the image to a image plane according to claim 8, the method comprising the further step of: utilizing the totality of all the arrays of spots whose centroids can be measured and reconstructed to yield an aberrated wavefront φ(u;x) at a number of discrete field points x.