Ray-based method for simulating cascaded diffraction in high-numerical-aperture systems

The electric field at the output of an optical system is in general affected by both aberrations and diffraction. Many simulation techniques treat the two phenomena separately, using a geometrical propagator to calculate the effects of aberrations and a wave-optical propagator to simulate the effects of diffraction. We present a ray-based...

Ray tracing the Wigner distribution function for optical simulations

We study a simulation method that uses the Wigner distribution function to incorporate wave optical effects in an established framework based on geometrical optics, i.e., a ray tracing engine. We use the method to calculate point spread functions and show that it is accurate for paraxial systems but produces unphysical results in the presence...

Simulating multiple diffraction in imaging systems using a path integration method

We present a method for simulating multiple diffraction in imaging systems based on the Huygens–Fresnel principle. The method accounts for the effects of both aberrations and diffraction and is entirely performed using Monte Carlo ray tracing.We compare the results of this method to those of reference simulations for field propagation through...

A Wigner-based ray-tracing method for imaging simulations

The Wigner Distribution Function (WDF) forms an alternative representation of the optical field. It can be a valuable tool for understanding and classifying optical systems. Furthermore, it possesses properties that make it suitable for optical simulations: both the intensity and the angular spectrum can be easily obtained from the WDF and the...