Design of circular Dammann gratings by employing the circular spot rotation method

Fung Jacky Wen,* Shu Ying Law, and Po Sheun Chung

Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China *Corresponding author: wen.jacky@gmail.com
Received 12 February 2007; revised 18 May 2007; accepted 1 June 2007; posted 4 June 2007 (Doc. ID 79999); published 23 July 2007

A new concept based on the theory of Dammann gratings is proposed for the generation of circular optical beams. This grating shows that it can achieve equal intensity and equal spacing with acceptable efciency that is controlled by set of transition points. A numerical solution is also presented together with the fabrication of 4-order circular Dammann grating by e-beam lithography. Experimental results agree well with the scalar diffraction theory. This grating has the potential to be further developed into practical applications. 2007 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 050.1950, 210.0210, 230.5750, 140.3560, 220.4000.

1. Introduction

Circular Dammann grating (CDG) is a diffraction grating which produces circular beams in ring-shape at the image plane. Zhou et al. [1] rst proposed the concept of CDG in 2003 based on the modulation of the Bessel function using a binary phase annulus mask. The phase and radius of each annulus can be modied so that the intensity at the far eld can be manipulated. However the CDG does not have the periodic nature as most of the gratings required and therefore, it is only a diffractive optical element (DOE). Recently Zhao and Chung [2] proposed a new design method for the periodic CDG using the coefcients of the circular sine series for generating equal-intensity and equalspacing of optical rings, which means those innite circular periods can be repeated. In this paper, we present another novel approach based on the concept of circular rotation of the nth order diffraction spots to achieve the same objectives as mentioned above with higher efciency and uniformity. Using electron-beam lithography, we have fabricated a 4-order CDG and have experimentally demonstrated that an intensity uniformity of 5% can be achieved for the four optical rings.
0003-6935/07/220001-04$15.00/0 2007 Optical Society of America 5452 APPLIED OPTICS Vol. 46, No. 22 1 August 2007

Dammann grating was originally proposed by Dammann and Gortler [3] as a binary phase grating that can be used to produce identical diffraction spot intensity with equal spatial separation. Dammann grating has two main advantages. Firstly, it is based on the use of -phase grating which allows a high output of light energy. Secondly, the grating is binary and therefore it can make use of planar fabrication techniques, such as photolithography and reactive ion etching, for cheaper mass production processes. The CDG has many interesting applications, such as measuring angular rotation of mirrors [4], generating disk-shaped DFB Lasers [5], usage in high density magnetic storage [6], and application in ngerprint resonators [7]. In this paper, we will discuss on the design of generating equal-intensity and equalspacing optical rings using CDG. By changing the prole of the CDG, the number of circles can be controlled.
2. Background Study

The concept of generating CDG is based on the theory of conventional Dammann Grating. We assumed that if the diffraction spots rotate 360 degrees continuously, circular rings will be formed, as shown in Fig. 1. We can also get the CDG prole by applying the same concept, as illustrated in Fig. 2. To analyze the performance of the CDG, we employ the BKK method

Fig. 1. (Color online) Concept of CDG.

and TE-polarized dependent mode is assumed [8]. In order to have an easier understanding, the entire Dammann grating has the identities of periodic, symmetric and binary [9]. For the formula of Circular Dammann Grating, the amplitude of the grating shown in Fig. 3 is
N 1

Ax
n 0

exp j

rect

xn 1 xn 2 , xn 1 xn

(1)

where x0 0, xN 1 are the transition points. Using the Fourier Transform and the binary phase structure, the magnitude of the different diffraction orders is given as:
N 1 xk 1

Mn
k 0

1 kj
xk

exp

j2 nx dx .

(2)

The nal equations among different orders will then be as follows: nth order: 1 n
2 N k 1 N k 1 2

Fig. 3. a. Transition Points in cross-section of Circular Dammann Grating. b. Circular Prole of Circular Dammann Grating with and 0.

Pn

Mn

1 kcos 2 nxk
2

We follow the even-numbered design rule which the grating periodicity will be set symmetric with respect to the origin [10], (3) xk xk
N 2

1 ksin 2 nxk

0.5,

(5)

0th order:
N 2

as the central spot effect will theoretically be cancelled. The overall efciency is therefore given as, P0 2
k 1

1 kxk

1 .

(4)
i

n n

P2i 1.

(6)

The feature size, which is the minimum distance between two subsequent transition points, is min xk
1

xk .

(7)

And the uniformity is dened as, max Pn max Pn min Pn . min Pn

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Fig. 2. CDG Prole Design.

uni
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Table 1. Some Numerical Solutions of CDG

Circle Number 1 2 3

Transition Points (xi) 0.5 0.20525 0.29067 0.5 0.11649 0.24024 0.26741 0.38396 0.5 0.099104 0.18382 0.26295 0.32925 0.4196 0.49492 0.5

Efciency Uniformity Feature ( ) (uni) Size ( ) 0.81 0.72 0.74 0 0.000063 0.0002 0.5 0.08542 0.02717

0.8

0.00014

0.00508

In this paper, the steepest descent algorithm, one of the well-known optimization technique, is employed to nd out the optimum set of transition points for generating high efciency and high uniformity circular images. The Cost function g x guides us for predicting the specic choice of transition points. A popular choice is the sum-square error, i.e. g x 1 i P Pav 2, where Pav is the average power 2 n i n of the ring. During optimization, we have to consider the tradeoff between efciency and uniformity. Generally speaking, the uniformity could be increased at the expense of lower diffraction efciency, and that is the fundamental consideration of DOE design [10,11]. The numerical solutions with near optimum efciency and uniformity of CDG are listed in Table 1.
3. Experimental Result

Fig. 5. (Color online) Output image of 4-order CDG.

We employ e-beam lithography process for fabricating the CDG. The e-beam resist emulsion NANO SU8 2000 from MicroChem Corp. was used as the grating material. The etching depth is the distance for the light to go through a phase shift of [10,11]. The designed grating will have the etching depth to 536 nm as the refractive index of SU8 is 1.59 at 633 nm wavelength with the size of 2 mm. In our

CDG experiment, we used a He-Ne laser source with an input power of 300 W. The fabricated 4-order Dammann grating and the output image are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. The measured ring separation is 1.5 mm while the actual depth of the grating is 593 nm. The additional height is due to the fabrication process which will cause the unwanted zero order spot to exist. The result could be better if the fabrication process is in more careful control when applying the e-beam lithography. The experiment can still show the feasibility of designing CDG with using our proposed method. We observed that the side lobe is present around the main lobe due to the nite size

Fig. 4. (Color online) Fabricated 4-order CDG with 200 magnication. 5454 APPLIED OPTICS Vol. 46, No. 22 1 August 2007

Fig. 6. 4-order circle intensities distribution along different diffraction order.

of the grating as an innite dimension is always assumed in our calculation. In Fig. 6, the differences between the theoretical and experimental results are due to the extra phase shift and side lobe effect. Although the spatial separation between two lobes is very small which can not be detected by using CCD, it may still cause uncertainty in some applications. Alternatively we can use the multilevel phase grating to remove the redundant side lobe power [2] if required. Although the side lobe exists and cannot be removed using the one-level phase grating, we can still control the separation of the two lobes and the design can be applicable in some cases if the separation doesnt pay the penalty for them.
4. Conclusion

References
1. C. Zhou, J. Jia, and L. Liu, Circular Dammann grating, Opt. Lett. 28, 2174 2176 (2003). 2. S. Zhao and P. S. Chung, Design of circular Dammann grating, Opt. Lett. 31, 23872389 (2006). 3. H. Dammann and K. Gortler, High efciency in-line multiple imaging by means of multiple phase holograms, Opt. Commun. 3, 312315 (1971). 4. H. M. Shang, S. L. Toh, Y. Fu, C. Quan, and C. J. Tay, The use of circular optical grating for measuring angular toation of mirrors, Opt. Lasers Eng. 36, 487500 (2001). 5. M. Toda, Single mode behavior of a circular grating for potential disk-shaped DFB lasers, IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 26, 473 481 (1990). 6. C. A. Ross, H. I. Smith, T. Savas, M. Schattenburg, M. Farhoud, M. Hwang, M. Walsh, M. C. Abraham, and R. J. Ram, Fabrication of patterned media for high density magnetic storage, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 17, 3168 3176 (1999). 7. X. H. Zheung and S. Lacroix, Mode coupling in circularcylindrical system and its application to ngerprint resonators, J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 8, 1509 1516 (1990). 8. C. B. Burckhardt, Diffraction of a plane wave at a sinusoidally stratied dielectric grating, J. Opt. Soc. Am. 56, 15021509 (1966). 9. J. Jahns, M. M. Downs, M. E. Prise, N. Streibl, and S. J. Walker, Dammann gratings for laser beam shaping, Opt. Eng. 28, 12671275 (1989). 10. R. L. Morrison, Symmetries that simplify the design of spot array phase gratings, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9, 464 471 (1992). 11. C. Zhou and L. Liu, Numerical study of Dammann array illuminators, Appl. Opt. 34, 59615969 (1995).

The Circular Dammann Grating can achieve the characteristics of equal-intensity and equal-spacing as demonstrated experimentally. The sample is fabricated using e-beam lithography. Experimental results are also compared with the theoretical analysis and a good agreement is obtained. Our results show clearly that the output circles are within our objectives in terms of a good uniformity of around 5%. Such grating can be employed in practical applications, such as measuring angular rotation of mirrors, usage in high density magnetic storage. This project is supported by CERG (No. 112805) of the Research Grant Council in Hong Kong.

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