ALGORITHMIC DESIGN OF DIFFRACTIVE OPTICAL-SYSTEMS FOR INFORMATION-PROCESSING

Diffractive optical systems are used for information processing. We po se the problem of diffractive computability which is equivalent to the factorization of a matrix into diagonal matrices and circulant matric es. Two instances of this problem will be answered: - Which 2(m) x 2(m ) matrices can in principle be factored into diagonal and circulant Fa ctors. - Which are the matrices that are optically realizable using up to three arbitrary diffractive elements. DWe give a fast algorithm to solve the nonlinear equations involved in designing optical setups of the latter type. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.