Design of cascaded diffractive phase elements for three-dimensional multiwavelength optical interconnects.

We propose a novel design method that incorporates multiple-layer relief profiles of diffractive phase elements to implement integrated operations on the incident beams according to their wavelengths. We demonstrate simultaneous wavelength-division demultiplexing, arbitrary (even random) wavelength shuffling or routing, spatial focusing, and other manipulations of multiwavelength beams, such as irradiance profile shaping, with design examples for applications in three-dimensional optical interconnects.