2016 Volume 89 Issue 3 Pages 93-97
Propagation and scattering of light in a medium is one of the major topics in the study of color materials as well as in many other research fields. Several optical theories dealing with the topic have been developed so far, including geometrical optics and quantum optics. If the minimum length scale of an object of interest is much larger than the wavelength of light, we can discuss the problems of light reflection and refraction by treating the light as rays. For smaller length scales, however, there are some phenomena which cannot be described by geometrical optics. In this case, we need to treat light as scalar or vector waves. The present article presents the theoretical treatment of light phenomena in the context of wave and electromagnetic optics. The finite-difference time-domain method is introduced as a numerical method for analyzing light propagation and scattering in complex media.
