Diffractive Optics
Making use of diffraction phenomena to obtain the desired pattern of light is the working principle behind beam splitters, spatial light modulators (SLMs) and many other optical elements. VirtualLab Fusion puts the tools at your disposal to, among others,
- take advantage of a guided, user-friendly design concept
- optimize high-NA beam splitters to eliminate distortion
- analyze the effect on the overall target beam of diffraction phenomena at individual pixels of an SLM
- investigate the combination in a general system of the diffractive optics with other optical components (like real lenses)
- export fabrication data of the designed element
- design beam splitters for arbitrary target patterns
Selected Use Cases
Find detailed technical information in the following selected samples:
The iterative Fourier transform algorithm (IFTA) in VirtualLab Fusion enables customized beam splitters design with high efficiency and flexibility.
Flexible export of fabrication data for smooth and quantized surfaces, as well as for mirror, prism and grating cell arrays.
For a diffractive beam shaper used together with focusing lens, the influence from lens aberrations on the system performance is investigated.
When SLMs are often employed as programmable diffractive optical elements, the influence from the pixel gaps on the system performance is investigated.
Fourier modal method is applied for the rigorous evaluation of non-paraxial diffractive beam splitters, which are initially designed by using IFTA and thin-element approximation.
Related Information
Find detailed technical information in the following selected samples:
The analysis of the diffraction efficiencies of gratings is the typical modeling task with gratings. The efficiencies follow from the Rayleigh coefficients. Both quantities are given for each of the diffraction orders of a grating.
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Find other samples including technical background information in our download area.
