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.