Fast Propagation of Electromagnetic Fields in Graded-Index Media

Frankfurt, 17th of May, 2018, SPIE Optical System Design 2018

Graded-index (GRIN) media are widely used for different situations. Modelling electromagnetic field propagation in GRIN media is of high importance for optical simulation and design. Based on the concept of fast physical optics, we develop a theory to efficiently propagate the field in GRIN media, including the effect of polarization cross-talk. Here we emphasize that the field is general, i.e., it can be either in its diffractive (focus region, for instance) or geometric zones (e.g., the far-field zone). This theory and the resulting algorithms include established propagation techniques as special cases, e.g. the paraxial and scalar split-step method.