Holographic beam shaping of partially coherent light

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel algorithm for holographic beam shaping of partially coherent light, using mode expansion and gradient descent, enabling precise intensity profile transformations.

Contribution

It presents a new inverse-design algorithm that effectively shapes partially coherent light, bridging coherent and geometric optical methods.

Findings

Numerical and experimental validation of the algorithm.

Achieved accurate intensity profile transformations.

Potential to realize any desired optical pattern.

Abstract

We present an algorithm for holographic shaping of partially coherent light, bridging the gap between traditional coherent and geometric optical approaches. The description of partially coherent light relies on a mode expansion formalism, with possibly thousands of individual modes, and the inverse-design optimization algorithm is based on gradient descent with the help of algorithmic differentiation. We demonstrate numerically and experimentally that an optical system consisting of two phase patterns can potentially achieve any intensity profile transformation with good accuracy.