Generating phase-only diffractive optical elements using adaptive constraints in the Fourier domain

In this work, a modified iterative design method of generating pure phase diffractive optical elements is reported. The adaptive constraint on Fourier domain was derived as a result of minimizing a criterion -functional. Considering the design for manufacturing, the soft quantization method is introduced into the iteration process. The performance of the proposed algorithm was verified by comparing with the standard iterative design method using a binary as well as gray-scale image. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to the conventional iterative Fourier transform algorithm in terms of reconstruction accuracy. The results from proof-of-concept experiments confirmed the conclusions, suggesting that our design method provides a new alternative for the diffractive optics community.