A new, to our knowledge, design method for diffractive optical element
s (DOE's) is described and compared with existing methods. The techniq
ue applies a nonlinear least-squares algorithm to design two-dimension
al pure phase DOE's that reconstruct a desired diffraction pattern wit
h high uniformity, efficiency, and signal-to-noise ratio. The techniqu
e also uses a phase-shifting quantization procedure that greatly reduc
es the quantization error for DOE's to a minimum level. In this paper,
we compare simulated reconstruction results of DOE's designed by use
of these methods with results obtained by the commonly used two-stage
iterative Fourier transform design algorithm of Wyrowski. (C) 1997 Opt
ical Society of America.