Tolerance in angles of continuously self-imaging gratings (CSIGs) is explored. The degradation in angle of the shape of the point-spread function is theoretically investigated and illustrated by simulations and experiments. The formalism presented is inspired by the one used for classical lenses and can be easily generalized to diffraction gratings. It turns out that well-designed CSIGs could b...

Heterogeneous, patterned surfaces comprising well-defined hydrophobic and hydrophilic regions and having micrometer-scale periodicities were prepared by patterning the adsorption of omega-functionalized alkanethiolates in self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold. Condensation of water on such surfaces resulted in drops that followed the patterns in the SAMs. These patterned condensation figures...

A photothermal detector consisting of a relief grating on the surface of an elastomer was fabricated and characterized. The detector has a sensitivity of the order of microwatts per square millimeter and has rise and fall times of the order of tens of seconds. Numerical and analytical modeling account for the behavior of the detector.

The grating thickness limit lFP between the Raman–Nath and the Bragg diffraction regimes is calculated for an index grating placed in an asymmetric Fabry–Perot resonator with a totally reflecting back mirror and compared with that which was obtained for the same grating with no cavity lM . Owing to the increase of the effective interaction length inside the Fabry–Perot cavity, the stronger the ...

In order to avoid laser-induced damage to optical components during amplification of a short laser pulse, the pulse often is first stretched in time to reduce its peak power, amplified, and then recompressed. High peak irradiance is attained when the laser beam is subsequently focused onto a laser fusion target. In a laser system, currently under construction, large diffraction gratings will be...

Far field X-ray grating interferometry achieves extraordinary phase sensitivity in imaging weakly absorbing samples, provided that the grating period is within the transverse coherence length of the X-ray source. Here we describe a cost-efficient process to fabricate large area, 100 nm half-pitch hard X-ray phase gratings with an aspect ratio of 32. The nanometric gratings are suitable for ordi...

Polarization properties of transmission volume holographic phase gratings recorded in a photopolymerizable glass modified with high refractive index species are reported. The gratings are recorded by the interference of two parallel s-polarized writing beams with orthogonal propagation directions. High optical quality, low scattering, and diffraction efficiency of 99.4% are achieved. Degrees of...

A model for designing and analyzing complicated surface relief diffractive elements in the resonance domain is developed. It is based on subdividing the complicated diffractive element into many highly efficient local diffraction gratings whose surface relief modulations can be effectively characterized as slanted volume gratings for which closed form analytic solutions exist. The model is illu...

An approach for obtaining one-way transmission in the beaming regime is suggested that is based on the directional radiation of surface plasmons in nonsymmetric metallic gratings with a single slit. In contrast to the various nonsymmetric one-way diffraction gratings that have recently been proposed, the possibility of obtaining of narrow beams is demonstrated. Strong directional selectivity ca...

Ferroelectric domain gratings with periods of the order of an optical wavelength are induced in strontium barium niobate by photorefractive space-charge fields. We measure the Barkhausen noise in current and diffraction efficiency while optically recording domain gratings and show that the two are strongly correlated in time. Significant random depolarization occurs under high-intensity illumin...