Based on the Iwasawa decomposition of a lossless first-order optical system as a cascade of a lens, a magnifier, and a so-called ortho-symplectic system, we show how to synthesize an arbitrary ABCD-system (with two transverse coordinates) by means of lenses and predetermined sections of free space, so that the lenses are located at fixed positions.
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http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=ol-31-16-2414