Staircase telescope arrays for local beam compression in one dimension

A deflecting staircase can be used like a telescope array to produce local beam compression in l-D. Such a component may be useful for array illumination in digital optical information processing. This paper introduces the concept of staircase telescope arrays and discusses realizations with mirrors, prisms, and gratings. The addition of a macro deflecting element and the extension of the staircase concept to 2-D beam compression are further topics.