Question: What are the S and P polarization states, and how do I enter a beam that is s-polarized?

The Jones matrix surface is a simple way to define polarizing components. This article provides some examples of its use.

Corner Cube retroreflectors are commonly used in a wide range of optical systems. This article describes various different ways in which these components can be modeled in ZEMAX. The treatment can be as detailed as the user needs, with effects due to face misalignment, roofline straddling, thin-film coatings, diffraction etc included as required.

Question: I have a MIRROR surface or object, but I have not defined a coating for it. How is its reflectivity accounted for?

This article explains:

• What birefringence is
• How ZEMAX models birefringence
• How to model a two-crystal birefringent polarizer
• How to compute the extinction ratio of the polarizer for a general ray

The article is accompanied by a ZIP archive containing the samples used and a macro. This can be downloaded from the final page of the article.

This article is also available in Japanese.

This article explains:

• How dichroic beam splitters can be modeled in non-sequential mode
• How to use the flexible table coating format which is useful when the coating prescription data is not available

Non-sequential objects are 3D volumes. Thin-film coatings, and scattering functions, are surface properties of these 3D volumes. This article explains:

• The concept of the "face number" of an object
• How thin-film coatings and scattering functions are applied to the various faces of an object
• Special issues involved in applying these properties to CAD objects

This article describes how to model a partially reflective surface which diffusely scatters a fraction of incident energy into a specific distribution.

This article describes how to model evanescent field effects like frustrated total internal reflection in ZEMAX. This is useful in applications like fingerprint scanners.

Question: When doing polarization ray-tracing through thin-film coatings, ZEMAX reports reflection, transmission and phase data using "ray" and "field" coefficients. What are these, how are they different, and which one should I use?