Usually complex lenses are described by their geometric design - usually a sequence of spherical cap sufraces and materials. The lens behavior, ie. how it transfers rays, can be evaluated by ray tracing. On the other hand wavefront aberrations can be computed for a particular lens. Are they enough to represent the ray transfer behavior of a lens?
Is it true that wavefront aberrations describe the way a beam of collinear rays are transferred though the lens? Is the list of wavefront aberrations valid only for a single direction of collinear rays or for any direction?
Thanks!
PS: I'm not a physicist but a computer graphics programmer, so excuse me in case the questions seem trivial for an optician :).