Holographic diffractive elements transforming Gaussian beams into super-Gaussian beams

The holographic method provides a possibility of creating not only uniform diffraction gratings but also non-uniform gratings whose relief depth varies over the grating surface. Therefore the diffraction efficiency of such structures varies over the element surface as well. In this paper we deal with shallow relief gratings with Gaussian modulated groove depth. It is shown that these structures can transform an incident Gaussian beam into a super-Gaussian one of low order. On the basis of the simple theory, basic properties of these elements are discussed. The validity of our approach is confirmed by experiments, and some of them are presented in this paper.