Abstract:
We present the generation of high-quality light beams of controllable spatial shapes with uniform-intensity
distribution based on diffractive optical elements (DOEs) designed by an iterative method that involves spatial
Fourier filtering. The Gaussian input beam illuminates the DOEs, and after propagating certain distance
transforms into desired uniform-intensity output beams with square, annular, rectangular, hollow square, and
plus spatial shapes. We have performed a detailed robustness analysis on the quality of shaped output beams
against various types of imperfections in an input beam. It is found that the quality of shaped output beams
can be further improved by using additional spatial filtering. Furthermore, we have shown that the quality of
shaped output beams remains excellent even when DOE (designed for a specific wavelength) is illuminated by
input beam with different wavelengths over a broad range.
