title: Electromagnetic analysis of axially symmetric diffractive optical elements illuminated by oblique incident plane waves.
abstract: We present an analysis of axially symmetric diffractive optical elements illuminated by off-axis or oblique incident plane waves. The analysis is performed with a finite-difference time-domain method that has been formulated to exploit axial symmetry yet accommodate off-axis illumination. This approach is compared with a full three-dimensional formulation and is found to be more efficient in both memory requirements and computational time. Validation and applications of this method are presented.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark 19716, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: D W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Prather