ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY OF BRAGG-FRESNEL LINEAR ZONE PLATES

An electromagnetic analysis of diffraction by Fresnel linear zone plat es ruled into a homogeneous or a stratified media is developed. It tak es advantage of the new possibilities brought by the introduction of t he R-matrix propagation algorithm into the theory of lamellar gratings , namely, the large increase of the stability domain of the numerical results. Thus a linear Fresnel zone plate can be delt with as a period of such a grating, and the of the method and study the focusing prope rties of positive and negative zone plates. The influence of different parameters such as incidence or number of lines is pointed out. (C) 1 995 Optical Society of America.