Talbot and Lau effects on incident beams of arbitrary wavefront, and their use.

Both the Talbot and the Lau effects of Ronchi and binary phase gratings on an incident wavefront of arbitrary wavefront are discussed. General and analytic solutions are obtained in terms of the Fresnel diffraction theory. Numerical simulations and supporting verification for Gaussian beams are demonstrated. It is found that the distortion of the self-image is closely linked to that of the far field distribution in a two-grating system, and both depend on the Talbot distance and the beam wavefront. Some interesting phenomena are explored such as light modulation and phase compensation. Possible applications are accordingly suggested.