Invited Paper

Using MATLAB to help teach Fourier optics

S. M. Schultz*a a Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT USA 84602
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the development of a graduate level course that covers diffraction theory and Fourier optics. MATLABTM is used as the basic numerical tool for these projects. In addition to providing functions for the calculation of Fresnel diffraction, the FFT command enables the calculation of the diffraction pattern of an arbitrary aperture. Relatively simple MATLABTM scripts are constructed to calculate the diffraction patterns of arbitrary graphics created in other programs such as text, pictures of faces, fingerprints, etc. Furthermore, the resulting diffraction patterns can be filtered and the same FFT commands be used to perform an inverse Fourier transform. This paper also describes a few demonstrations that can be used to reinforce what is covered on the projects. The demonstrations are based on a simple 4F system. The first half of the 4F system is used to show how an illuminated image changes from a reduced version of the image into a spatial frequency mapping. A Fourier plane mask is also created with small features on a chrome plated photomask. Since the features are relatively small various different types aperture can be placed on the mask. Keywords: Fourier Optics, numerical methods, teaching methods

1.

INTRODUCTION

Diffraction theory is often taught as a purely mathematical treatment or used to analyze very simplistic apertures such as slits and holes. The goal of this paper is to describe how the scientific analysis tool MATLAB can be used to perform complex mathematical calculations without bogging down the students with the details of the exact numerical methods. MATLAB enables the students to investigate diffraction phenomena and application. The simplified numerical program is applied to both the Fresnel and the Fraunhofer diffraction domains. This paper is divided into three main sections (1) Fresnel diffraction, (2) Fraunhofer diffraction and (3) experimental implementation.

2.
2.1 Fresnel Diffraction using MATLAB

FRESNEL DIFFRACTION

The basic Fresnel integral is given by [1]

jk jk 2 2 E ( x, y, z ) = C o Ei (x' , y ') exp ( x x') exp ( y y ') dx' dy ' , 2z 2z

(1)

where Ei is the electric field at the z=0 plane. This integral is often very difficult to solve and is usually solved numerically. Even though modern computer are fast enough perform this type of numerical integration, the solutions typically take too long on a common desktop computer for simple class projects. The computation time can be dramatically reduced by casting the diffraction equation into built-in MATLAB function. By using built in functions MATLAB will be using look-up tables rather than numerical integration resulting in the dramatic reduction in computation time. The MATLAB functions are the Fresnel cosine integral given by

C ( x ) = cos t 2 dt 2 0
x

(2)

and the Fresnel sine integral

Optics and Photonics for Information Processing edited by Abdul A. S. Awwal, Khan M. Iftekharuddin, Bahram Javidi Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695, 66950I, (2007) 0277-786X/07/$18 doi: 10.1117/12.735889 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-1

 S ( x ) = sin t 2 dt . 2 0
x

(3)

These functions are called in MATLAB by mfun(FresnelC, x) and mfun(FresnelS, x). These built-in functions require the MATLAB Symbolic Toolbox. If the incident electric field Ei has discrete values over various Cartesian regions then Eq. 1 can be cast into the addition and multiplication of various Fresnel integral. This binary requirement is applicable to analyzing structures such as apertures, binary amplitude and phase gratings, etc. The diffraction integral (Eq. 1) is put in term of the Fresnel integrals (Eqs. 2-3) by (1) breaking the exp term up into sine and cosine terms, (2) doing a series of variable substitutions, and (3) breaking the integral up into terms that go from 0 to x. 2.2 Amplitude Diffraction Grating

A binary amplitude grating is a good representative example. Figure 1 shows a finite binary grating of total width W and gratings period . In this example the grating period is =30m, the total width is W=300m, the free-space wavelength is =600nm, and the grating fill factor is 50%. Three basic concepts that can be taught with this example structure is near field diffraction, transition into grating orders, and transitioning in the Fraunhofer approximation.

Figure 1. 2.2.1 Near Field Diffraction (Talbot Image Planes) One of the interesting near-field phenomena is Talbot image in which the intensity is a replica of the grating at distances of z=2L2/ [2]. When the distance from the grating is half of the Talbot image distance then the intensity is also a replica of the grating but with a 180 spatial phase shift. Figure 2c shows that at the Talbot image distance (z=22/) the

Figure 2. Fresnel diffraction patterns at distances of (a) z=0.0015m=2/, (b) z=0.0023m=1.52/, and (c) z=0.0023m=22/.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-2

intensity is very low in the region where the grating has zero transmission, while Figure 2a shows that at half the Talbot image distance (z=2/) the intensity is at a minimum where the grating has 100% transmission. Figure 2b shows the transition between these two regions. The computation is fast enough and the MATLAB programming is simple enough for the students to create animations showing this transition with know much about numerical simulation coding. 2.2.2 Transition to Fraunhofer Diffraction As the optical field propagates farther from the grating it transitions into diffraction orders. This transition is often neglected because it cannot be analyzed with simple analytical expressions. However, the simple MATLAB program enables the students to create animation showing this transition. Figure 3 show the intensity at four planes equally spaced in distance away from the grating. At the first plane the grating replication can still be seen and in the final plane the two grating lobes can be seen forming.

Figure 3. Intensity as a function of distance away from the grating.

z 0.01 (00.015) z 0.03 (00.075)
0_s

006(00.075)
3

a 0.1 (00.015)

04,

lIE

Figure 4. Comparison between the (solid) Fresnel diffraction and (dashed) Fraunhofer diffraction as a function of distance from the grating. As the beam propagates farther away from the grating, Fraunhofer approximation becomes valid. The standard validity range for the Fraunhofer approximation is given by [1] z

> 2W 2 , where W is the half width of the grating. The

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-3

MATLAB code can be used to show this calculation. Similar to the other transition regions, the students can program MATLAB to make animations showing where the diffraction orders for into the sinc functions predicted by the Fraunhofer diffraction calculations. Figure 4 shows the calculations at various distances away from the grating.

3.
3.1

FRAUNHOFER DIFFRACTION

Fourier Transform using MATLAB

When the distance away from the grating is large or a lens is used to focus the diffraction pattern to the image plane, then the diffraction pattern becomes a Fourier transform as given by [1]

E ( x, y, z ) = C o {E} f

x=

fy =

(4)

The Fourier transform of simple structures such as gratings, rectangular apertures, circular apertures, etc. have analytic solutions. However, the students need to be able to take Fourier transforms of arbitrary 2D structures. In order to perform 2D Fourier transforms in a computationally efficient method, MATLAB has a built-in Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) function. The FFT function in MATLAB uses the Cooley-Tukey algorithm [3] to performs a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) as given by

F ( p, q ) = f (m, n ) e
m =0 n =0

2 j pm M

2 j qn N

p = 0,1,K , M 1 . q = 0,1, K, N 1

(5)

The steps required to compute the Fourier transform are (1) discretize the aperture, (2) compute the DFT using FFT algorithm, and (3) relate the integer parameters back to spatial coordinates.

Discretized Aperture The 2D amplitude aperture is analyzed in MATLAB by simply creating a black and white image of the aperture in a standard graphics program and saving the image as a gif file with 2 color levels. When the image is read into MATLAB the aperture will be discretized by the pixilation of the image with white being complete transmission and black being complete block. A gray-scale image can also be used to create different amounts of transmission. Any phase terms would need to be added in MATLAB. Computing the DFT The 2-dimensional DFT is commuted using the fft2 command in MATLAB. However, the fft2 command places the center index in the corners. Figure 5a shows the slit image that is read into MATLAB using the following code A = imread('slit','gif')

Figure 5. (a) The image read into matlab using the imread command in MATLAB. (b) The DFT computed using the fft2 command in MATLAB, which places the center index in the corners. (b) The fftshift command that shifts the corners back into the center.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-4

Figure 5b shows that the FFT of the rectangular aperture (Figure 5a) using the MATLAB code E=fft2(A) which places the maximum intensity into the corners rather than the center. Figure 5b illustrates how the fftshift command fixes this problem and put the maximum intensity back into the desired location. The MATLAB code for the shift is E=fftshift(fft2(A))

Scaling The last part of computing the 2D Fourier transform is converting the discrete index into physical spatial coordinates. The discrete frequency is given by

=
which is then related to the continuous spatial frequency by

1 k, M

(6)

fx =

1 1 1 k, = p p M

(7)

where p is the pixel size, which is essentially p = W M , where W is the total width of the aperture and M is the number of pixels. The last step is then performing the substitution dictated by the Fraunhofer approximation as given by f x = x f resulting in

x= f

1 1 M 1 M M k = f ,L, . p M W M 2 2

(8)

The total spatial extent of the diffraction pattern is

M f 2

. Notice that the spatial coordinates is related to the

(b)

number of pixels. Figure 6 show calculations with both 256 and 64 pixels.
(a)

E E

E E

>

>

x(ww)

x(ww)

Figure 6. Diffraction pattern of a slit with (a) 256 pixels and (b) 64 pixels. The parameters of the calculation are wavelength =600nm, slit width W=100m, lens focal length f=16.5mm.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-5

The number of pixels in the diffraction pattern is equal to the number of pixels in the initial image. However, since the extent of the diffraction pattern also increases with the number of pixels the spatial resolution does not increase with the number of pixels and is given by x

1 = f W

. Thus, the spatial resolution is deceased by increasing the total

extent of the image. The total extent of the image is increased without changing the slit width by adding space around the image, which is called zero padding. Figure 7 show the diffraction pattern calculated with FFT method with different amount of zero padding.

(a)

(b) diffraction pattern

slit

slit

diffraction pattern

02

0 x(ww)

Figure 7. Diffraction pattern of a 100m wide slit with (a) too little zero padding and (b) with enough zero padding. The problem associated with adding a lot of zero padding is that if too few pixels cover the actual aperture then the calculated diffraction pattern will not be as accurate. Summary of MATLAB Code By using MATLAB code the programming is fairly straight forward enabling the students to concentrate on exploring complex aperture structures rather than programming numerical integration. Listed below is the MATLAB code to perform a diffraction calculation. Notice how a complex diffraction pattern can be analyzed with only 11 lines of code. A = (imread('slit','gif')); sz = size(A); N = sz(1); M = sz(2); lambda = 600e-9; f = 16.5e-3; W = 4e-3; I = (fftshift(fft2(A))).^2; x = linspace(-lambda*f*N/(2*W), lambda*f*N/(2*W), N); y = linspace(-lambda*f*M/(2*W), lambda*f*M/(2*W), M); pcolor(x, y, I) 3.2 Examples of Diffraction Patterns

Figure 8 - Figure 12 show various diffraction patterns computed using the MATLAB code described in this paper.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-6

(a)

(b)

Figure 8. Diffraction patterns of letter made with (a) arial and (b) times new roman fornts.

Figure 9. Diffraction pattern of an aperture constructed with multiple letters.

Figure 10. Diffraction pattern of a Cassegrain telescope aperture.

Figure 11. Image recognition for matching images.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-7

Figure 12. Image recognition for mismatched patterns.

4.
4.1

EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION

Experimental 4-F System Implementation

Experimental implementation of a Fourier optics system is very complimentary to numerical simulations discussed earlier. For example, with an experimental system it is more difficult to change various filter and image parameters that would be varied in a numerical simulation exercise. With an experimental implementation it is easy to look at the transition of an arbitrary image between the Fourier and the Fraunhofer domain.

object

Fourier plane mask

image

laser 10x objective f=16.5mm lens f=1000mm lens f=500mm lens f=500mm

Figure 13. Experimental implementation of a 4F optical image processing set-up. Figure 13 shows the experimental implementation. There are a variety of factors that can make a simple experimental implementation not work well. The Fourier-plane mask needs to have very opaque blocking. A transparency does not block enough light to be effective. Therefore, the Fourier-plane mask was constructed with a photolithography chrome contact mask. Another difficulty is the need for very small mask features to work in the visible region of the optical spectrum. The feature size is kept larger by using lenses with large focal lengths. In addition to being easier to fabricate the mask, the larger features also make the alignment easier. Since the features on the mask are small, main different mask types and sizes can be fabricated onto the same mask.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-8

4.2

Experimental Results

One of the most obvious experiments is to perform a high-pass and a low-pass optical signal processing. In Figure 14 the red laser light is transmitted through a transparency of the word BYU. The hole is used to create a low pass filter resulting in the blurring of the word. Various sizes of holes are placed in adjacent locations on the Fourier-plane mask to change the amount of blurring. Similarly, an opaque dot is used to perform high-pass filtering, which results in edge detection.

Figure 14. Experimental implementation of high-pass and low-pass optical image processing. Another very instructive exercise involves looking at an image as a function of distance away from the focusing lens. As the students expect the image gets smaller with distance. However, when the Fraunhofer approximation becomes valid the image transforms into its spatial frequency components. Figure 15 shows the distinct difference between the image slight off of the focal plane and at the focal plane. The ability to easily look at the transition is one of the powers of an experimental implementation.

Figure 15. The diffraction pattern at a position just before the focal plane and at the focal plane.

5.

SUMMARY

This paper has described the potential of using MATLAB to perform Fourier optics calculations. MATLAB is a fairly simple programming language, which enables engineers and physicist to perform precise numerical calculations without needing to get bogged down into the specifics of the numerical calculations.

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-9

The methods to analyze diffraction in both the Fresnel domain and the Fraunhofer domain have been covered. Some of the specific of both the derivations and the MATLAB code have been provided in order to facilitate their implementation in other classroom settings. In addition to the numerical calculations using MATLAB, a simple experimental implementation of 4f system has also been provided.

6.
1 Introduction to Fourier Optics, J. Goodman (1996) 2 H. F. Talbot, Philos. Mag. Vol. 9, p. 401 (1836) 3 http://www.fftw.org/

REFERENCES

Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6695 66950I-10