Physical optics

About: Physical optics is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5342 publications have been published within this topic receiving 101388 citations. The topic is also known as: wave optics.

Spatial statistical optics and spatial correlation holography: A review

Abstract: Classical statistical optics is revisited with the aim of introducing the concept of spatial statistical optics that places particular focus and special emphasis on spatial statistics of the optical field, rather than on their temporal statistics. The principles of emerging technology of statistical correlation holography based on spatial statistical optics are reviewed, and their unique capabilities for coherence and polarization shaping as well as synthesizing stochastic optical fields with desired statistical properties are introduced.

Diffraction at the edge of a truncated grounded dielectric slab

Abstract: A uniform high-frequency solution is presented for the diffraction of a horizontal electric dipole located upon a truncated, semi-infinite grounded dielectric slab. This solution is achieved by an asymptotic evaluation of a diffraction Sommerfeld-type integral, which is derived by using a physical optics formulation. The final uniform result is given in terms of a geometrical optics contribution and ray-diffracted contributions from space waves, surface waves, and leaky waves. Although this asymptotic expression is derived by assuming a large distance between the source and the edge, comparisons with a numerical integration have shown very good accuracy also for a distance about 0.2 wavelength. This solution provides physical insight into the diffraction phenomenon and an effective tool for predicting the effects of finite substrates in patch antennas. Indeed, within the expected limitations of the PO approximation, the present formulation is applicable to most of the substrate thicknesses and dielectric constants of practical interest in patch antennas.

Energy-density distribution inside large nonabsorbing spheres by using Mie theory and geometrical optics.

Abstract: Mie theory and geometrical-optics ray tracing are used to obtain the distribution of electric energy density inside a nonabsorbing micrometer-sized sphere illuminated by a polarized plane wave. The Mie solution shows the multiply reflected geometrical-optics rays inside a sphere having a diameter of ~ 150 free-space wavelengths (size parameter = circumference/wavelength = 500). The geometrical-optics result shows the major features of the Mie solution and provides a physical interpretation of the electromagnetic interactions that result in the observed energy-density distributions. Both solutions show internal on-axis energy-density maxima inside the shadow surface of the sphere. The region of greatest enhanced energy density is approximately one internal wavelength in diameter and approximately twenty internal wavelengths in length.

Wave‐Optical Aspects of Lorentz Microscopy

Abstract: The customary defocused and Foucault modes of Lorentz microscopy of magnetic films are usually described in terms of geometric optics. However, Wohlleben has shown that geometric optics has a restricted range of validity; a more fundamental approach is provided by wave optics. The defocused and Foucault modes may be discussed in terms of wave optics, and for the defocused mode, it can be shown explicitly that the geometric theory is simply the first approximation to the wave‐optics theory. Consideration of wave optics also leads to the proposal of two additional modes of Lorentz microscopy: Zernike phase‐contrast and interference microscopy; these modes cannot be described on the basis of geometric optics. The most fundamental problems in magnetic films which are amenable to study by Lorentz microscopy are investigations of the fine structures of domain walls and magnetization ripple. These problems are discussed in terms of wave optics for all four modes of Lorentz microscopy; in particular, the intensit...

Rendering specular microgeometry with wave optics

Abstract: Simulation of light reflection from specular surfaces is a core problem of computer graphics. Existing solutions either make the approximation of providing only a large-area average solution in terms of a fixed BRDF (ignoring spatial detail), or are specialized for specific microgeometry (e.g. 1D scratches), or are based only on geometric optics (which is an approximation to more accurate wave optics). We design the first rendering algorithm based on a wave optics model that is also able to compute spatially-varying specular highlights with high-resolution detail on general surface microgeometry. We compute a wave optics reflection integral over the coherence area; our solution is based on approximating the phase-delay grating representation of a micron-resolution surface heightfield using Gabor kernels. We found that the appearance difference between the geometric and wave solution is more dramatic when spatial detail is taken into account. The visualizations of the corresponding BRDF lobes differ significantly. Moreover, the wave optics solution varies as a function of wavelength, predicting noticeable color effects in the highlights. Our results show both single-wavelength and spectral solution to reflection from common everyday objects, such as brushed, scratched and bumpy metals.