IMAGE-FORMATION OF DILUTE ARRAYS FOR OPTICAL INFORMATION-PROCESSING

A typical job in three-dimensional opto-electronics is image formation of a regular array of point sources onto a similar array of detector elements. Most likely the array will be "dilute", meaning light sources which are small compared to the distance between sources. The distance from source array to detector array will be in the order of the array size, if a bulk component such as a beam splitter has to be placed somewhere between source array and detector array. We compare three different optical setups, which employ macro lenses and/or arrays of micro lenses. The comparison is performed in the spirit of complexity theory. That provides us with an understanding of the scaling behavior of the three setups