Free-space beam propagation between arbitrarily oriented planes based on full diffraction theory: a fast Fourier transform approach

A fast and accurate numerical method for free-space beam propagation between arbitrarily oriented planes is developed. The only approximation made in the development of the method was that the vector nature of light was ignored. The method is based on evaluating the Rayleigh-Sommerfeld diffraction integral by use of the fast Fourier transform with a special transformation to handle tilts and offsets of planes. The fundamental aspects of a software package based on the developed method are presented. A numerical example realized with the software package is presented to establish the validity of the method. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.