Abstract

If the propagation of a light field can be satisfactorily described by a diffraction integral with an ABCD kernel, the propagation of its irradiance centroid is completely determined by the corresponding ABCD ray-transfer matrix in exactly the same way as if the centroid path were a conventional geometrical ray. However, potentially significant deviations from this geometrical propagation rule may arise in the presence of finite or nonuniform apertures truncating or otherwise modifying the input beam irradiance distribution.

© 2011 Optical Society of America

Optical beam wave propagation through complex optical systems

H. T. Yura and S. G. Hanson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4(10) 1931-1948 (1987)

Second-order statistics for wave propagation through complex optical systems

H. T. Yura and S. G. Hanson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 6(4) 564-575 (1989)

Propagation of flat-topped multi-Gaussian beams through an apertured ABCD optical system

Yan-Qi Gao, Bao-Qiang Zhu, Dai-Zhong Liu, and Zun-Qi Lin
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 26(10) 2139-2146 (2009)

Single-pass and double-pass propagation through complex paraxial optical systems

L. C. Andrews and W. B. Miller
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 12(1) 137-150 (1995)

Propagation of a centrosymmetric optical vortex beam through a paraxial ABCD system with an axicon

Zhonghua Pei, Sujuan Huang, Cheng Yan, and Xianpeng Liu
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 37(9) 1448-1455 (2020)