Large aperture continuous phase diffractive optical element to realize uniform focal spot

Abstract

Uniform focal spot, with flat top, steep edge, low side lobe and high light efficiency, is required in many high power laser system. Using diffractive optical element (DOE) to realize such uniform illumination has many advantages, such as high light efficiency of pure phase modulation, strong flexibility of phase design and so on. A kind of hybrid algorithm based on hill-climbing and simulated annealing is utilized for phase design, owing to the strong convergence of the hill-climbing and the global optimization potential of the simulated annealing. A continuous phase DOE with diameter 100 mm has been fabricated by a rotating hollowed-out mask and ion-etching on the K9-glass substrate. The interferogram of the DOE is given to show the smoothness of the phase distribution. The intensity distribution of the focal spot are measured by a general CCD, and a series of attenuators are used to increase the dynamic range of the measurement. The results after data-processing show that the uniform focal spot with certain uniformity at the main lobe, sharp edge, low side lobe and without sharp peak at the zero order has been obtained.