Oblique propagation of light through a thick, space-variant birefringent element

Understanding and modeling the propagation of polarized light through thick, space-variant birefringent media is important in both fundamental and applied optics. We present and experimentally evaluate two methods to model the off-axis propagation of polarized light through a thick stress-engineered optic (SEO). First, we use a differential equation solving method, which utilizes the analytic expression for the Jones matrix of the SEO leading to a numerical solution for the output electric field. Then we present a geometric method to obtain similar results with much less computational complexity. Finally, a comparison is done between the data and the simulations.