Soft x-ray spectroscopy of celestial sources with high resolving power R = E/∆E and large collecting area addresses important science listed in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey New Worlds New Horizons, such as the growth of the large scale structure of the universe and its interaction with active galactic nuclei, the kinematics of galactic outflows, as well as coronal emission from stars and other ...

Diffraction gratings are ubiquitous wavelength dispersive elements for photons as well as for subatomic particles, atoms, and large molecules. They serve as enabling devices for spectroscopy, microscopy, and interferometry in numerous applications across the physical sciences. Transmission gratings are required in applications that demand high alignment and figure error tolerances, low weight a...

The class of second-order curvilinear gratings consists of all the curvilinear gratings that are obtained by second-order spatial transformations of periodic gratings. It includes, for example, circular, elliptic, and hyperbolic gratings as well as circular, elliptic, and hyperbolic zone plates. Such structures occur quite frequently in optics, and their Fourier transforms may arise, for instan...

Diffraction gratings are among the most commonly used optical elements in applications ranging from spectroscopy and metrology to lasers. Numerous methods have been adopted for the fabrication of gratings, including microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabrication which is by now mature and presents opportunities for tunable gratings through inclusion of an actuation mechanism. We have designed...

Diffraction gratings have been proposed as core optical elements in future laser interferometric gravitational-wave detectors. In this paper, we derive equations for the coupling between alignment noise and phase noise at diffraction gratings. In comparison to a standard reflective component (mirror or beam splitter) the diffractive nature of the gratings causes an additional coupling of geomet...

By means of experiment and simulation, we achieve unprecedented insights into the formation of Talbot images to be observed in transmission for light diffracted at wavelength-scale amplitude gratings. Emphasis is put on disclosing the impact and the interplay of various diffraction orders to the formation of Talbot images. They can be manipulated by selective filtering in the Fourier plane. Exp...

We report the first experimental realization of total internal reflection (TIR) diffraction gratings. Performance of less than 0.7-dB insertion loss (IL) for both TE and TM polarizations and 0.5-dB polarization-dependent loss (PDL) are predicted over a 50-nm spectral bandwidth with simultaneous fabrication tolerances on the depth and the duty cycle of binary gratings of +/-5% and +/-14%, respec...

Large thickness is required in holographic recording materials to be used as holographic memories. Photopolymers have proved to be a good alternative to construct holographic memories. Nevertheless, modeling the behavior of thick layers poses some problems due to high absorption of the dye, as discussed in previous papers. In this study, the gratings stored in photopolymers based on PVA/AA are ...

Enhanced control of diffraction through transparent substrates is achieved via disordered gratings in a silica sol-gel film. Tailoring the degree of disorder allows tuning of the diffractive behavior from discrete orders into broad distributions over large angular range. Gratings of optical quality are formed by silica sol-gel nanoimprint lithography and an optical setup for the measurement of ...

Controlled postdevelopment heat treatment of the photoresist polymer used in the preparation of holographic gratings has been shown to enhance the diffraction efficiency of gratings and reduce the scattering losses. We prove this effect by analyzing the resonant reflection spectra of a waveguide grating and observing the reduction in the arc-shaped light scattering associated with the excitatio...