Modelling and Simulation of propagation of light in isotropic and anisotropic media with magneto-optic activity

Abstract

Light propagation through thin film isotropic layers as well as anisotropic have been studied since the middle of the twenty century with applications in chemistry, biology, optical communications and materials engineering. Theoretical development has been made in order to find Fresnel coefficients, optical functions as reflectance, transmittance and when Joule effect is present absorptance. The transfer matrix method 2 × 2 for isotropic media is followed finding the Fresnel coefficients and optical functions with angular dependence. Explicit expressions for electric field module as function of transversal component of the structure for three media are derived and simulated, an iterated method is derived to find the electric field in a structured multilayer for isotropic stratified media. Three approaches are tested for light propagation in anisotropic multilayer systems, first the 4×4 transfer matrix method introduced by Yeh, but due to the method do not work on the limits of the isotropy the immersion method proposed by Cojocaru is programmed instead. This second method was programmed and an analytical solution of electric field was derived and calculated via software. The scattering matrix approach was used finally to avoid numerical overflows present in electric fields calculated by Cojocaru’s method, optical functions are calculated as well as the transversal magneto-optic Kerr effect. Results were contrasted with those calculated in literature. Flux diagrams at the end of each chapter were included to give some clarity of the programming developed in Matlab