Tolerancing and analysis of a diffractive beam shaper

Abstract

This paper describes the design and analysis of a deep-UV diffractive beam shaper for converting a collimated Gaussian beam into a collimated flattop beam. Diffractive beam shapers can be manufactured in most common materials to provide good beam control with very low non-uniformity. Beam shapers, however, are generally very sensitive to beam parameters and alignment. Here we examine the sensitivity of the beam shaper to alignment and tilt of the input beam, phase surfaces, and various other fabrication errors. This device was successfully built and comparisons with laboratory measurements show excellent agreement with simulation predictions.