Area-coded effective medium structures, a new type of grating design

We propose a new way to design gratings with desired diffraction properties by using subwavelength feature sizes perpendicular to the ordinary superwavelength grating period. This is different from well-known one-dimensional binary-blazed gratings that use a structuring along the grating period and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics letters 2005-07, Vol.30 (13), p.1617-1619
Main Authors: KLEEMANN, Bernd H, RUOFF, Johannes, ARNOLD, Ralf
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Diffraction and scattering
Exact sciences and technology
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
Gratings
Optical elements, devices, and systems
Optics
Physics
Wave optics
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Summary:We propose a new way to design gratings with desired diffraction properties by using subwavelength feature sizes perpendicular to the ordinary superwavelength grating period. This is different from well-known one-dimensional binary-blazed gratings that use a structuring along the grating period and thus opens new flexibility in generating arbitrary effective-index distributions in the direction of the grating period. Since the subwavelength features form contiguous areas, they are called area-coded effective medium structures (ACES). Compared with well-known binary subwavelength structures in two-dimensional arrangements consisting of pillars, ACES are more stable and have comparable efficiency properties. As an example we show how to design in principle a four-level area-coded effective medium grating, compare the efficiency of ACES with binary-blazed and échelette gratings, and optimize the subwavelength period of ACES.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.30.001617