| ZEMAX incorporates a complete polarization ray tracing and analysis capability. Any input polarization state may be defined, and the polarized light may be traced through any optical system. ZEMAX accounts for transmission, reflection, absorption, polarization state, diattenuation, and retardance. |
Polarization ray tracing requires the computation of surface and bulk material effects. Surface effects depend upon the properties of any thin film optical coatings applied to a surface. |
Thin films modeling |
| ZEMAX has an extensive thin film modeling capability to support the polarization analysis. Multilayer film dielectric and metallic coatings may be defined, from either a predefined or user defined material database. |
Coatings may be applied to either dielectric or metallic substrates. Coatings may be composed of arbitrary layers of arbitrary material, each defined with a complex index of refraction, with full dispersion modeling in the coating materials. Substrates may be glass, metallic, or user defined. |
ZEMAX automatically reverses the coating layer order if surfaces go from air to glass then glass to air, so the same coating may be applied on many surfaces without the need to define “mirror image” coatings. |
With the coating data in place, ZEMAX computes the diattenuation, phase, retardance, reflection, transmission, or absorption of any coating as a function of wavelength or angle. |
Material modeling |
| Bulk absorption is modeled in detail in ZEMAX, including transmission through any thickness of glass at any wavelength. Bulk absorption generally attenuates a ray, and the amount of attenuation depends upon the ray path length, material properties, and wavelength. Any material may have user defined absorption or transmission properties. |
Polarization data |
| ZEMAX allows definition of either an unpolarized or polarized input beam. Rays are then traced and ZEMAX keeps track of the electric field vector in 3D space, including the S and P components at every surface intercept. Transmission and polarization vector properties are modeled in detail. |
Polarization ray tracing results may be presented in tables, or may be summarized by graphical displays. |
