Theoretical and Experimental Study of the Diffraction Intensity of Gradient Refractive-Index Lenses

We develop the wave-optics approach for calculating the diffraction distribution of gradient refractiveindex lenses and observing the diffraction pattern of gradient refractive-index lenses in the experiments. The results of our calculation are in good agreement with the experimental results obtained. We show that the diffraction can be regarded as a method to check the quality of the refractive-index distributions of gradient refractive-index lenses.