The field of light structuring in extended 3D regions of space is making significant progress in the design, implementation and applications. Some of the physical principles and algorithmic aspects will be indicated and several applications will be discussed. Applications related to fundamental aspects of light propagation include the generation of non-expanding beams and beam-arrays. While several technological applications of the above mentioned light distributions can be foreseen, some were also investigated. These include surface profile measurements with resolution exceeding classical diffraction limits. Another area of application is in special lithography where the possibility of extending the depth of focus of light structures can be utilized. The algorithms used in this work are designed to exploit the information content of the recording device in an optimized way. This enables the generation of diffractive optical elements on low resolution devices, such as presently available spatial light modulators. Accordingly, dynamically programmable light distributions can be implemented for various applications such as free-space interconnections, display and measuring procedures.

Date Published: 29 April 1999
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 3729, Selected Papers from International Conference on Optics and Optoelectronics '98, (29 April 1999); doi: 10.1117/12.346785

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3729:
Selected Papers from International Conference on Optics and Optoelectronics '98
Kehar Singh; Om Prakash Nijhawan; Arun Kumar Gupta; A. K. Musla, Editor(s)