Affine diffractive beam dividers

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to generate multiple diffractive beam dividers from a single optimized design using affine transforms, simplifying the design process for various beam configurations.

Contribution

The authors generalize Fourier analysis of diffractive elements and demonstrate that affine transforms can produce new dividers without additional optimization.

Findings

Affine transforms preserve efficiency of diffractive beam dividers.

Designs can be reused to generate multiple beam splitters.

The method reduces design time for optical beam division.

Abstract

Diffractive optical elements that divide an input beam into a set of replicas are used in many optical applications ranging from image processing to communications. Their design requires time-consuming optimization processes, which, for a given number of generated beams, are to be separately treated for one-dimensional and two-dimensional cases because the corresponding optimal efficiencies may be different. After generalizing their Fourier treatment, we prove that, once a particular divider has been designed, its transmission function can be used to generate numberless other dividers through affine transforms that preserve the efficiency of the original element without requiring any further optimization.