Adjoint method and inverse design for diffractive beam splitters

Dong Cheon Kim; Andreas Hermerschmidt; Pavel Dyachenko; Toralf Scharf

doi:10.1117/12.2543367

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21 February 2020 Adjoint method and inverse design for diffractive beam splitters

Dong Cheon Kim, Andreas Hermerschmidt, Pavel Dyachenko, Toralf Scharf

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Proceedings Volume 11261, Components and Packaging for Laser Systems VI; 1126115 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2543367
Event: SPIE LASE, 2020, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Diffractive optical elements with a large diffraction angle require feature sizes down to sub-wavelength dimensions, which require a rigorous electromagnetic computational model for calculation. However, the computational optimization of these diffractive elements is often limited by the large number of design parameters, making parametric optimization practically impossible due to large computation times. The adjoint method allows calculating the gradient of the target function with respect to all design variables with only two electromagnetic simulations, thus enabling gradient optimization. Here, we present the adjoint method for modeling wide-angle diffractive optical elements like 7×7 beam splitters with a maximum 53° diffraction angle and a non-square 5×7 array generating beam splitter. After optimization we obtained beam splitter designs with a uniformity error of 16:35% (7×7) and 6:98% (5×7), respectively. After reviewing the experimental results obtained from fabricated elements based on our designs, we found that the adjoint optimization method is an excellent and fast method to design wide-angle diffractive fan-out beam-splitters.

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Dong Cheon Kim, Andreas Hermerschmidt, Pavel Dyachenko, and Toralf Scharf "Adjoint method and inverse design for diffractive beam splitters", Proc. SPIE 11261, Components and Packaging for Laser Systems VI, 1126115 (21 February 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2543367

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