What do forbidden light-ray fields look like?

Paul Stockman; Stephen Oxburgh; Tomáš Tyc; Johannes Courtial

doi:10.1117/12.2061409

12 September 2014 What do forbidden light-ray fields look like?

Paul Stockman, Stephen Oxburgh, Tomáš Tyc, Johannes Courtial

Proceedings Volume 9193, Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization XVII; 919304 (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061409
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Ray-optically, optical components change a light-ray field on a surface immediately in front of the component into a different light-ray field on a surface behind the component. In the ray-optics limit of wave optics, the incident and outgoing light-ray directions are given by the gradient of the phase of the incident and outgoing light field, respectively. But as the curl of any gradient is zero, the curl of the light-ray field also has to be zero. The above statement about zero curl is true in the absence of discontinuities in the wave field. But exactly such discontinuities are easily introduced into light, for example by passing it through a glass plate with discontinuous thickness. This is our justification for giving up on the global continuity of the wave front, thereby compromising the quality of the field (which now suffers from diffraction effects due to the discontinuities) but also allowing light-ray fields that appear to be (but are not actually) possessing non-zero curl and there by significantly extending the possibilities of optical design. Here we discuss how the value of the curl can be seen in a light-ray field. As curl is related to spatial derivatives, the curl of a light-ray field can be determined from the way in which light-ray direction changes when the observer moves. We demonstrate experimental results obtained with light-ray fields with zero and apparently non-zero curl.

Citation Download Citation

Paul Stockman, Stephen Oxburgh, Tomáš Tyc, and Johannes Courtial "What do forbidden light-ray fields look like?", Proc. SPIE 9193, Novel Optical Systems Design and Optimization XVII, 919304 (12 September 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2061409

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
6 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Refraction

Geometrical optics

Optical design

Cameras

Optical spheres

Glasses

Interfaces

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years