Patent ID: 11921306
Assignee: II-VI DELAWARE, INC.
Field: Optics (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 0:
1. An article for input beams, each input beam characterized by a corresponding wavelength within an operational wavelength range, the article comprising:
a grating substrate arranged with the input beams being incident thereto and being substantially transparent over the operational wavelength range; and
a plurality of diffraction gratings contiguously arranged on the grating substrate, each diffraction grating being characterized by a corresponding grating wavevector, each diffraction grating differing from at least one other diffraction grating with respect to the corresponding grating wavevectors, the diffraction gratings arranged with the input beams being incident thereto as incident beams along a corresponding incident propagation direction and being configured to diffract portions of the incident beams as diffracted portions by non-zero-order diffractive transmission, the diffracted portions and zero-order-transmitted portions of the incident beams being configured to collectively produce a far-field illumination,
wherein an angular separation of an output propagation direction of each one of the diffracted portions, from the output propagation direction of at least one other of the diffracted portions, being less than a corresponding far-field divergence of that diffracted beam; and
wherein a first solid angle of the far-field illumination is a composite superposition of all of the diffracted portions arising from the diffraction gratings acting on the incident beams, the first solid angle being larger than a second solid angle of the far-field illumination resulting from the zero-order-transmitted portions of the incident beams.