Characterization of 1D diffractive optical elements by phase inversion

Abstract

We consider the feature dimensions of selected 1D diffractive optical elements (DOE) such that the Fourier transform based Gerchberg-Saxton (GS) iterative scalar phase retrieval algorithm, as calibrated by the results of vector coupled-wave theory, may be used for phase reconstruction. We consider examples only of continuous surface relief and binary (two level, not multi-level) phase-only DOE. Experimental phase distribution for rectangular and blazed gratings with ∼ 5λ period agree within experimental limits with scalar theory, and, for the rectangular grating, were shown to agree also with the vector theory. Phase distributions are considered for a continuously varying linear blazed grating with 10λ periodicity, its sampled binary equivalent with minimum feature sizes of 0.1λ and for continuous linear blazed gratings with period varied from ∼ 16λ to ∼ 2λ. The vector calculations show an average linear dependence of the phase on grating period, but the vector curves are displaced to lower values from the scalar results by an increasing amount as the grating period is reduced. Grating performance is more influenced by the size of the grating period than the subwavelength size of the features in a binary representation. Reasonable equivalence is found in the prediction of correct phase distributions between scalar and vector theory for grating periods > ∼ 5λ.