Abstract

The Huygens integral, or Green’s function, for paraxial beam propagation in a generalized lenslike medium is derived as a Feynman path integral involving a summation over real rays. This formulation provides a physically intuitive understanding of the structure of the Green’s function. The path integral is evaluated by introducing in a consistent manner the notion of complex rays, and the familiar result for the Huygens integral in terms of the complex ABCD matrix of the medium is obtained.

© 1987 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)

Optical path integrals in gradient-index media

Carlos Gómez-Reino and Jesús Liñares
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 4(8) 1337-1341 (1987)

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)

Off-axis complex-argument polynomial-Gaussian beams in optical systems

Anthony A. Tovar and Lee W. Casperson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 8(1) 60-68 (1991)

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)