From diffraction theory, an expression is derived for the radius of a gaussian beam, in an output plane of a single lens, on-axis optical system, as a function of input waist radius, lens focal length, input waist to lens spacing, and lens to output plane spacing. Several special cases are discussed and plots of the important cases are included. The choice of the plots, and their scaling, was made on the basis of providing useful information to those people involved with typical problems in laser scanning systems, such as the location and size of the focused spot. The derivation includes a discussion of truncation effects.

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Volume holographic optical elements exhibit a property that we call bidiffringence, in which the diffraction efficiency of the element is strongly dependent on the polarization of the incident beam. Dualelement, volume holographic polarization separators utilizing bidiffringence can provide high extinction ratios, and they can provide greater angular separation of the polarized beams and greater flexibility in the beam-separation parameters than conventional birefringent elements. We designed and constructed holographic polarization separators using dichromated gelatin as the holographic medium. Experimental results are compared with the results predicted by the Kogelnik coupled wave theory.

An optical analysis is presented for the performance of an acoustooptic deflector illuminated by a slittruncated Gaussian beam and operating in the linear FM mode. Effects of relatively small scan-time/access-time ratios and nonlinearity of the FM are considered.

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