Diffractive optical elements for beam shaping of monochromatic spatially incoherent light

Fresnel-type diffractive optical elements (DOEs) for general beam shaping of monochromatic, spatially incoherent light are demonstrated. Direct and indirect methods, i.e., adding a lens' phase to the designed Fraunhofer-type DOEs, are used for the design. The indirect method can reduce the calculation time by approximately half without loss of design accuracy. Two different design examples are shown. For one design the direct method gives a maximum sidelobe intensity of 5.0% of the maximum intensity in the signal window. For the second design the indirect method gives 23.0% of this value. The generated patterns can maintain their basic shapes over a long distance. The elements have been fabricated by directly using gray-scale commercial slides as masks. Experimental results are in close agreement with numerical predictions. © 2006 Optical Society of America.