Light propagation through etalons and other components with internal multiple reflections

Component, e.g. Fabry-Pérot etalon , with internal multiple reflections plays an important role in laser technology. Its optical functionality is based on multiple reflections inside the component and the interference effect. In this paper, two electromagnetic concepts that allow the modeling of such components for general incident light are proposed. The first one is based on an iterative field tracing approach. With this approach multiple reflections through and inside the component are handled respectively. One typical example is the simulation of Newton’s rings effect or the modeling of an etalon with thickness variation because of fabrication tolerances. The other one is based on the matrix method for stratified media, which is usually used to handle optical layer systems Fabry-Pérot-etalon. We present the details, demonstrate various examples and also discuss sampling issues due to the internal multiple reflections.