Abstract

Because of the recent advances in optical communication and digital optical computing technologies, an immediate need has arisen for high-efficiency, precision optical components capable of generating and rerouting arrays of light beams. These must be able to perform operations such as fan-out and spatial permutation in order that the full potential of optics be realized. The flexibility this requires makes holographic optical elements (HOEs) an ideal solution. Our paper describes recent research, carried out by our group into the design and fabrication of such volume phase HOEs, which use dichromated gelatin (DCG) as the recording medium. This includes a wide range of both space-invariant fan-out elements and space-variant interconnects. Both direct optical recording and computer-generated hologram copying techniques were used. The work can be broken down into three main sections: (1) DCG copies of even-order missing Dammann grating array generators, (2) transmission and reflection fan-out components, and (3) the fabrication of a range of space-variant interconnects (e.g., a 10 × 10 stacked perfect shuffle of 500µm pixel size). In addition, we shall describe a complete interconnect setup and discuss the influence of system tolerances on various design parameters.

© 1990 Optical Society of America