Analysis Methods For Energy Transmission And Polarization State Of Traced Rays In Optical Systems

An excellent analysis method for light power and polarization will be a good guidance for us to design optical systems. Calculation methods on power of light with different polarization state are different. It is difficult to process changes in power and polarization for non-polarized light and partially polarized light whose vibration directions are arbitrary in vibration planes. The light polarization will also affect the image quality in some cases, for example, when imaging with large numerical aperture. Based on ray tracing principle, for light with different polarization state, analysis methods for changes in power and polarization state are systematically researched in this paper. The main innovations are as follows:firstly, sampled linearly polarized light is used to describe the power and polarization state of incompletely polarized light, this method is intuitive and has a good accuracy, but it needs a large amount of computation. In order to decrease computation, another novel method is proposed. Ray ellipse is introduced to describe power and polarization state of light, and an approach of superimposing ray ellipses is used to analyze their changes. To introduce the applications, many optical systems are discussed with these methods. At last, an aplanatic lens system characterized by large numerical aperture and high image quality is simulated. Changes in power and polarization of incident non-polarized light are discussed and polarization effect caused by large numerical aperture is analyzed with this method. The results show that for the imaging light the intensity of TM polarized light relatively increases because of large numerical aperture, which will influence image quality. Imaging in high refractive index medium can be used to improve this polarization effect problem.