Polarization effects modeling with field tracing (Conference Presentation)

Abstract

Polarization effects and phenomena arise due to the vectorial nature of light. Many modern optical techniques rely on such effects; while sometimes polarization effects appear in a detrimental way. It is of great concern to take such effects into optical system modeling and design. Instead of adding polarization onto rays, we follow the field tracing concept and it is a natural choice for polarization modeling. In field tracing, light is represented in the form of electromagnetic field with all vectorial information, and various electromagnetic field solvers are used to modeling light interaction with different optical components. We present simulation examples on several polarization phenomena, for example, focusing light into birefringent crystal, using polarizer in non-paraxial situation, vectorial effect in tightly focused light, polarization conversion at sub-wavelength gratings, and so on.