The Concept of Bidirectional Operators and Its Application to the Modeling of Microstructures

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

The well-established ray-tracing concept of Bidirectional Scattering Distribution Function, used traditionally to model the scattering of rays at micro-structured surfaces, serves as the inspiration for what we have called “bidirectional”, or B, operators: a physical-optics generalization that refers not only to the modelling of surface scattering, but of any component in an optical system; the effect of said component on a general electromagnetic field is contained in the corresponding B operator; the S matrix concept in grating theory may be understood as a special case thereof. Any method to solve Maxwell’s equations in the component can generally be formulated in the form of a B operator. A non-sequential connection of the different B operators solving Maxwell’s equations in different regions of an optical system enables physical optics in the entire system.