POLARIZATION RAY TRACING TENSOR METHOD

摘要

Polarization ray tracing for incoherent light uses a polarization ray trace tensor that can be expressed in local or global coordinates. Ray tracing through a plurality of optical elements or interactions can be performed by cascading polarization ray tracing tensors to obtain a combined polarization ray tracing tensor for the ray path. One or more polarization ray tracing tensors is applied to an input coherence matrix to obtain an output coherence matrix. Polarization ray tracing tensors can be defined based on optical surfaces, Mueller matrices, polarization ray tracing matrices, scattering functions, or other characteristics of optical interfaces and systems.