ARRAY ILLUMINATORS BASED ON DIFFRACTIVE O PTICAL-ELEMENTS

This paper is a presentation of array illuminators based on diffractiv e optical elements. Theses devices are among the most commonly used no wadays. Particular attention is paid to three of them: Dammann grating s and similar elements, Talbot illuminators and lenslet arrays. Althou gh they are very close in terms of design and fabrication, they differ , by the diffraction regimes in which they operate. Therefore, we emph asize this peculiarity which results from the properties of the respec tive diffraction regimes and we show how the choice of an array illumi nator is mainly dependent on the application requirements.