Statistic analysis of influence of phase distortion on diffractive optical element for beam smoothing

In this paper, the diffractive optical element (DOE) is used to realize beam smoothing with the smoothing by spectral dispersion (SSD) technique. The influences of the high and low frequency phase distortions on the DOE for beam smoothing are statistically analyzed based on the spatial frequency spectrum method. The amplitude and initial phase spectra of the far field intensity distribution are modulated by the characteristic of the phase distortion. The relationship between the performance parameters of the beam smoothing and the characteristic of the phase distortion is obtained. This can afford a theoretical tool to determine whether the characteristic of the phase distortion and the performance of the designed DOE for beam smoothing are able to satisfy the requirement of the light efficiency and the non-uniformity simultaneously or not. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.