Software for free-space beam propagation

Software has been developed to propagate uniform or non-uniform beams through an optical system using diffraction techniques. The optical system can be divided into regions where geometrical ray tracing is appropriate and regions where diffraction propagation is necessary. This combines the accuracy of diffraction propagation with the speed of geometrical lay tracing to obtain accurate diffraction analyses at any surface in the system in the fastest manner. This software has been incorporated into the CODE V(R) optical design program.