Self-imaging of gratings with two roughness levels

In previous works, the authors have analyzed diffraction gratings with surface roughness on their strips. Appl. Opt. 46 (2007) 3668 determined the near field of a grating whose strips present two kinds of roughness, one of them so rough that the grating acts as an amplitude grating. On the other hand, in J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 25 (2008) 2390, a grating with roughness only in one of the grating levels is studied. In the present work, we extend our analysis to the general case where the strips of the grating present two finite roughness levels. As a consequence, the periodic modulation is only generated by random micro-topography of the strips. A statistical analysis is developed to obtain equations that predict the average intensity distribution after the grating. This general case presents differences with the previous works. For example, the maximum contrast of the self-images is given at a certain distance from the grating, that is, the contrast of the self images firstly increases with the distance of the observation plane and after, it decreases. Numerical simulations, based on Rayleigh–Sommerfeld approach, are performed which confirm the theoretical predictions.