Design of refractive/diffractive hybrid optical elements for beam shaping with large diffraction pattern

Abstract

Diffractive optics is an important technique for beam shaping with high light efficiency and strong diffraction pattern flexibility. Since the diffraction angle is limited by the unit size of the diffractive optical element (DOE), the size of the required diffraction pattern is always rather small. In this Letter, refractive/diffractive hybrid optical elements (RDHOEs) consisting of a DOE and a lens are used to realize beam shaping for a large diffraction pattern. The lens, as the component of the RDHOEs, can not only be concave but also convex, and the double sampling Fresnel diffraction algorithm is developed for the design of these two types of RDHOEs. The simulation and experimental results provide solid evidence to demonstrate the proposed method with the pure phase spatial light modulator.