AMPLITUDE CHECKER GRATING FROM ONE-DIMENSIONAL RONCHI GRATING AND ITSAPPLICATION TO ARRAY GENERATION

The Ronchi grating is well known for its many applications in areas su ch as spectroscopy, grating interferometry, and Talbot interferometry. On the other hand, the checker grating has attracted very little atte ntion. A checker grating also self-images at equidistant planes; the s eparation between these planes is a quarter of the Talbot distance of a Ronchi grating of the same period. To understand this and several ot her features, a transition from Ronchi grating (a one-dimensional grat ing) to checker grating (a two-dimensional grating) has been both theo retically and experimentally Studied and results are presented. Becaus e the checker grating self-images closer to the grating and its transm ittance is higher than that of a Ronchi grating, the use of its self-i mage planes for array generation is also emphasized. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.