Synthetic diffractive optics in the resonance domain

Abstract

Resonance-domain diffractive optics covers the region where the characteristic feature sizes in the surface-relief modulation structure of the diffractive optical element are comparable to the wavelength of light; it may be viewed as a bridge between synthetic holography and the electromagnetic theory of diffraction gratings and rough surfaces. We consider the problem of synthesizing, in the framework of the electromagnetic theory, various types of periodic resonance-domain diffractive optical elements that utilize several diffraction orders. Parametric optimization is used to design one-to-N fan-out elements, N-to-N star couplers, and polarization-controlled optical beam splitters and switches with close to 100% efficiencies and no undesired diffraction orders in the image half-space. Reflection-type fan-out gratings with six and seven output beams are demonstrated experimentally at λ = 10.6 μm.