We report the use of a pulse-width modulation drive technique for high-resolution liquid-crystal gratings and show how the grating diffraction efficiency depends on the duty cycle of the drive signal. We identify a regime in which the diffraction efficiency is linearly proportional to the duty cycle, thereby providing a linear drive characteristic.

A comparison is made between rigorous numerical results and a recently proposed analytical method for modeling light diffraction by lamellar diffraction gratings. The conclusion is that the analytical model is quite restrained in its applicability and can be misleading in determining the behavior of the grating efficiencies.

A new real-time interferometer based on diffraction phenomena is discussed. It consists of a point-diffraction interferometer fabricated on a transmission grating. The real-time data-analysis capability is achieved by simultaneously introducing a phase shift (piston) on the three separate channels of diffracted interferograms. Mathematical analysis and preliminary observational results are incl...

We present a simple model for understanding the perfect blaze for diffraction with echelle gratings. Littrow diffraction at grating profiles with rectangular apexangles implicates two pairs of counterpropagating light waves. The four waves show a rectangular pattern of interference fringes. Integer numbers of such fringes along both facets of a groove ensure perfect blazing with echelle gratings.

Recently [Opt. Lett. 25, 1092 (2000)], two of the present authors proposed extending the domain of applicability of grating theories to aperiodic structures, especially the diffraction structures that are encountered in integrated optics. This extension was achieved by introduction of virtual periodicity and incorporation of artificial absorbers at the boundaries of the elementary cells of peri...

The equations providing to describe generation process in FEL with varied parameters of diffraction grating (photonic crystal) are obtained. It is shown that applying diffraction gratings (photonic crystal) with the variable period one can significantly increase radiation output. It is mentioned that diffraction gratings (photonic crystal) can be used for creation of the dynamical wiggler with ...

We present a semiclassical perturbation method for the description of atomic diffraction by a weakly modulated potential. It proceeds in a way similar to the treatment of light diffraction by a thin phase grating, and consists in calculating the atomic wavefunction by mean~ of action integrals along the classical trajectories of the atoms in the absence of the modulated part of the potential. T...

The transmittance, ellipsometric parameters, and depolarization of transmission, diffraction, and reflection of two volume holographic gratings (VHGs) are measured at a wavelength of 632.8 nm. The measured data are in good agreement with the theoretical simulated results, which demonstrated the correlation between the diffraction strength and the polarization properties of a VHG. Vector electro...

Fraunhofer diffraction patterns of human enamel samples were photographed with a helium-neon laser beam (lambda = 633 nm). The first-order diffraction angle was in reasonable agreement with a prediction based upon enamel prisms acting as a two-dimensional grating. These results support the hypothesis that enamel diffracts light because of the periodic structure of enamel prisms with interprisma...