Broadband beam shaping with harmonic diffractive optics

We consider spatial shaping of broadband (either stationary or pulsed) spatially coherent light, comparing refractive, standard diffractive, and harmonic diffractive (modulo 2πM) elements. Considering frequency-integrated target profiles we show that, contrary to common belief, standard diffractive (M = 1) elements work reasonably well for, e.g., Gaussian femtosecond pulses and spatially coherent amplified-spontaneous-emission sources such as superluminescent diodes. It is also shown that harmonic elements with M ≥ 5 behave in essentially the same way as refractive elements and clearly outperform standard diffractive elements for highly broadband light.