High-diffractive-efficiency defocus grating for wavefront curvature sensing

The optimum phase defocus grating for wavefront curvature sensing is proposed. It features an equidistantly quantized, binary-phase-step defocus grating with a phase-step height of pi. The diffractive efficiency of the phase defocus grating is theoretically computed. The optical transfer function is obtained. The optimum phase defocus grating is fabricated. The high diffractive efficiencies of the 1 diffraction orders are verified experimentally, the average values of which are 38.08% and 40.36%, respectively. (c) 2007 Optical Society of America.