Abstract

Volume holographic applications, such as high- capacity optical interconnects, involve media whose dielectric properties are modulated by multiple periodic variations which are viewed as many gratings superposed inside a single volume. To treat the corresponding electromagnetic problems, we have recently developed¹ a multiple-scattering approach that uses a flow-graph representation of the scattered fields. This approach leads to very fast calculations of the relevant diffracted orders, but its application was restricted to obtaining transmitted fields in the presence of small-amplitude modulations only. Because those situations correspond to weakly scattering regimes in which backward scattering could be neglected, we have extended the multiple-scattering approach to strongly scattering regimes that require the inclusion of backward scattering effects. The improved formulation thus permits the evaluation of both transmitted and reflected fields. Numerical results will be discussed and compared with results obtained by coupled-wave methods.

© 1991 Optical Society of America