title: Limitations of the paraxial Debye approximation.
abstract: In the paraxial form of the Debye integral for focusing, higher order defocus terms are ignored, which can result in errors in dealing with aberrations, even for low numerical aperture. These errors can be avoided by using a different integration variable. The aberrations of a glass slab, such as a coverslip, are expanded in terms of the new variable, and expressed in terms of Zernike polynomials to assist with aberration balancing. Tube length error is also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Nanophysics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy. colinjrsheppard@gmail.com
authors.forename: Colin J R
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Sheppard