Incoherent diffractive optical elements for extendable field-of-view imaging.

Abstract

We present a diffractive optics design for incoherent imaging with an extendable field-of-view. In our design method, multiple layers of diffractive optical elements (DOEs) are synthesized so that images on the input plane illuminated with spatially incoherent light are reproduced upright on the output plane. In addition, our method removes the need for an approximation of shift invariance, which has been assumed in conventional optical designs for incoherent imaging systems. Once the DOE cascade is calculated, the field-of-view can be extended by using an array of such DOEs without further calculation. We derive the optical condition to calculate the DOEs and numerically demonstrate the proposed method with the condition.