Diffractive element design for resonant scanner angular correction: a beam retardation approach

A new approach for designing diffractive optical corrective elements with zooming capability to convert nonlinear sinusoidal scanning into linear scanning is proposed. Such a device will be useful for linearizing the angular scan of a resonant mirror scanner. The design methodology is to create a graded index of a refraction device as the reference design with its index of refraction parameters based on beam retardation through propagation in an inhomogeneous medium. The diffractive element is designed by utilizing a binarizing algorithm of the accumulated phase from transmission through the refractive element. In contrast to a prior approach, which was introduced based on the beam propagation through inhomogeneous media, the new approach takes beam diameters into consideration. This makes both the refractive element and its associated diffractive element more robust against beam fanning.