Design of Multi-phase Holographic Optical Low-pass Filter for the Improvement of the MTF Characteristics

We studied the spatial filtering characteristics of a multi-phase hologram optical low-pass filter(HOLF). Using the Monte-Carlo based hologram generation program, we designed holograms whose diffraction patterns are circular shaped 21 beams and calculated the diffraction efficiencies and MTFs. 4-phase HOLF have the same diffraction efficiency as that of 2-phase HOLF. The MTF graphs of the two are also nearly alike. But 8-phase HOLF shows higher efficiency than those previously discussed and has larger MTF values in the low frequency region. 16-phase HOLF has just a little better characteristics than 8-phase. Considering the errors which can arise in the process of making holograms, 8-phase HOLF fits the goal of improving the resolution of spatial filter. We also fabricated 8-phase HOLF and .measured MTF The experimental results agree well with the theoretical expectations.