Diffraction control of reflected beam by chirped mirror

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a novel functionality of chirped mirror for monochromatic light beams: a diffraction control in reflections resulting in focusing or imaging of beams. The chirped mirrors, commonly used for manipulating temporal profiles of pulses, here are applied for manipulating the spatial dispersion of a monochromatic beam. By penetrating into dielectric layers of chirped mirror, the monochromatic beam experiences the negative diffraction, therefore the beam diverge propagating in front and behind the structure in normal diffraction region can be compensated inside this structure with negative diffraction. The result is focusing or imaging of the reflected beam from a flat interface of chirped mirror without optical axis.