Effect of spurious diffraction orders in arbitrary multifoci patterns produced via phase-only holograms.

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Holography
• Diffraction Theory

Background:

• Phase-only holograms are used to generate multifoci patterns.
• Illuminating holograms with Gaussian beams can lead to spurious diffraction orders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the impact of spurious diffraction orders on multifoci pattern generation.
• To quantify light loss to unwanted diffraction orders.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of light distribution from phase-only holograms illuminated by Gaussian beams.
• Investigation of practical hologram encoding devices.

Main Results:

• Undesirable zero and high-diffraction orders are generated at the Fourier plane.
• A significant fraction of incident light is lost to spurious orders, not functional patterns.
• Shifting foci patterns off-axis to avoid zero order increases light distribution to higher spurious orders.

Conclusions:

• Spurious diffraction orders are a major limiting factor for applications utilizing arbitrary multifoci patterns.
• Efficient generation of multifoci patterns requires mitigation of light loss to unwanted diffraction orders.