Aberrations of diffracted wave fields: distortion

    Authors

    J. E. Harvey; D. Bogunovic;A. Krywonos

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Appl. Optics

    Keywords

    Optics

    Abstract

    Near-field diffraction patterns are merely aberrated Fraunhofer diffraction patterns. These aberrations, inherent to the diffraction process, provide insight and understanding into wide-angle diffraction phenomena. Nonparaxial patterns of diffracted orders produced by a laser beam passing through a grating and projected upon a plane screen exhibit severe distortion (W-311). This distortion is an artifact of the configuration chosen to observe diffraction patterns. Grating behavior expressed in terms of the direction cosines of the propagation vectors of the incident and diffracted orders exhibits no distortion. Use of a simple direction cosine diagram provides an elegant way to deal with nonparaxial diffraction patterns, particularly when large obliquely incident beams produce conical diffraction. (C) 2003 Optical Society of America.

    Journal Title

    Applied Optics

    Volume

    42

    Issue/Number

    7

    Publication Date

    1-1-2003

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1167

    Last Page

    1174

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000181379400001

    ISSN

    1559-128X

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