Efficient tensor approach for simulating paraxial propagation of arbitrary partially coherent beams

Complicated partially coherent beams (PCBs) are useful in many applications, such as free-space optical communications, particle trapping and optical imaging, while usually it is hard to derive analytical propagation formulae for such beams, and one has to fall back on numerical methods. The conventional numerical methods have some intrinsic drawbacks. In this paper, we introduce an efficient tensor approach (ETA) for simulating paraxial propagation of arbitrary PCBs. The ETA is a direct reconstruction of the propagated PCB without aliasing and rippling problems, and the algorithm is simple and robust with a tensor/matrix multiplication as the main calculation. The validity of ETA is verified through comparing simulation results with analytical results, numerical integration results and experimental results, respectively. The ETA provides a fast and reliable way for simulating paraxial propagation of arbitrary PCBs.