Abstract

Bartelt and Horner [1,2,3] have described an iterative procedure for constructing Tandem Component (TC) filters, which are a series of phase-only, passive elements distributed through an optical system. Of the several applications considered, the one of interest to this author is that of optical correlators. Since the elements do not affect the amplitude of the optical beam (ie, there is no absorption), the optical efficiency of these systems is higher than systems using conventional matched filters. By using more than one element, more than one degree of freedom can be influenced and an iterative technique can be used to force a desired response in the correlation plane for a given input.

© 1988 Optical Society of America