Edge spread function of Talbot phenomenon

The paper presents and analyses the edge spread function of Talbot phenomenon—self-imaging of a periodical structure in given distances behind a template, if the template is illuminated by a plane wave. This phenomenon has many applications in optical metrology and in industry. Detailed mathematical analysis with an amplitude grating illuminated by a monochromatic plane wave is performed, and a simple relation for the calculation of the edge spread function width of Talbot imaging of Ronchi grating is shown which allows a simple analysis of the edge spread function for different grating sizes without any difficult calculations. The results bring a complete insight to the problematics and it can serve as a great theoretical background in many applications which utilize Talbot phenomenon.