Optical diffraction by inhomogeneous volume objects

GUSTAVO FORTE; ALBERTO LENCINA; MYRIAN TEBALDI; NESTOR BOLOGNINI

San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California, USA

Conferencia; SPIE Optics+Photonics 2008; 2008

SPIE

Electromagnetic waves propagation research in volume media increases considerably in the last years. The study evolved from thick hologram gratings, Bragg and Raman-Nath diffraction regimes up to current research in photonics materials. Usually differential methods are employed to account for the light transmitted for volume media. In our proposal, we develop a simple and versatile integral method to calculate the diffracted field provided the media refractive index has low variations in a wavelength scale. In fact, starting from first principles, we obtain a modified version of the Fresnel propagator of the scalar diffraction theory. Our method is valid for some kind of magnetic, dielectric and absorbent inhomogeneous media. In particular, for TE (TM) fields, we can study media where the permittivity (permeability) gradient is perpendicular to the electric (magnetic) field and its permeability (permittivity) is constant. To validate the approach, we applied it to (in) homogeneous media having well known diffraction properties.