Centroid propagation through optical systems with ABCD kernels and nonuniform or finite apertures

Abstract

If the propagation of a light field can be satisfactorily described by a diffraction integral with an ABCD kernel, the propagation of its irradiance centroid is completely determined by the corresponding ABCD ray-transfer matrix in exactly the same way as if the centroid path were a conventional geometrical ray. However, potentially significant deviations from this geometrical propagation rule may arise in the presence of finite or nonuniform apertures truncating or otherwise modifying the input beam irradiance distribution