Maxwell Optics: III. Applications

A new formalism of beam-optics and polarization has been recently presented, based on an exact matrix representation of the Maxwell equations. This is described in Part-I and Part-II. In this Part, we present the application of the above formalism to the specific example of the axially symmetric graded index fiber. This formalism leads to the wavelength-dependent modifications of the six aberrations present in the traditional prescriptions and further gives rise to the remaining three aberrations permitted by the axial symmetry. Besides, it also gives rise to a wavelength-dependent image rotation. The three extra aberrations and the image rotation are not found in any of the traditional approaches.