Title

Aberrations of diffracted wave fields: distortion

Authors

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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