Diffractive performance of a photon-sieve-based axilens.

An axilens is a combination of an axicon and a Fresnel zone plate to provide a long focal diffractive lens. However, the photon sieve has been known as a high-resolution version of the Fresnel zone plate. Therefore, construction of an axilens on the basis of a photon sieve may yield a high-resolution axilens. To this end, circular zones of an axilens were replaced by a given distribution of pinholes. It is shown that lateral resolution of the axilens is increased due to the replacement. The impact of different distributions of pinholes on the focusing properties of the axilens were also examined. Results indicate that by implementing different distributions of pinholes resolution and focal depth are changed and hence, are manageable. Theoretical results are verified by experimental work.