ABSTRACT
As technologies for the fabrication of micron and submicron structures have matured (Zaleta et al., 1993; Gale, 1997; Stern, 1997), interest in phase-only diffractive optical elements (DOEs) has increased. Many discussions of DOEs concentrate primarily on their application (Morrison et al., 1993; Jahns, 1994) and others on the analysis of DOE performance using diffraction theory (Glytsis et al., 1993) Although DOE analysis is critical to an understanding of the technology, equally important for widespread application of DOEs is an understanding of their design, or, in contrast to DOE analysis, DOE synthesis.
