Isotropic compensation of diffraction-driven angular dispersion

Abstract

We report on an optical arrangement capable of compensating angular dispersion of paraxial wave fields developed by diffractive optical elements (DOEs). Schematically, the system is a beam expander in which two phase-only zone plates have been inserted, remaining afocal the coupled system. The DOE, which induces a continuous set of dispersive tilted plane waves, is placed at a specific position within the proposed setup providing an output spectrum with achromatic angular deviation. A directional matching between phase fronts and pulse fronts of output wave packets is demonstrated.