Characterization of diffractive optical elements for space sensor applications

A test system for performance verification of diffractive optical components was designed. The principle of the test methods is to measure the light intensity distribution in the near-field by scanning it with a pinhole detector while illuminating the element with a plane wave. Contrary to other performance verification methods, the scanning methodallows high flexibility in the characterization of diffractive optical elements and allows also the determination of thediffraction efficiency. 1. INTRODUCTION Diffractive optical elements (DOEs), and their combination with conventional components -Hybrid Optics-, offer veryinteresting and new possibilities for optical system design due to their design flexibility. The miniaturization potentialof such type of optics and its compactness make this technology particularly interesting for space applications1. Someof the potential applications of DOEs in space are beam shaping of high-power laser diode arrays2, athermalized hybrid I ,3 or beam shaping elements allowing to reduce the complexity of laser communication terminal tracking