Quasioptical modeling of wave beams with and without mode conversion. III. Numerical simulations of mode-converting beams.

This work continues a series of papers where we propose an algorithm for quasi-optical modeling of electromagnetic beams with and without mode conversion. The general theory was reported in the first paper of this series, where a parabolic partial differential equation was derived for the field envelope that may contain one or multiple modes with close group velocities. In the second paper, we presented a corresponding code PARADE (PAraxial RAy DEscription) and its test applications to single-mode beams. Here, we report quasi-optical simulations of mode-converting beams for the first time. We also demonstrate that PARADE can model splitting of two-mode beams. The numerical results produced by PARADE show good agreement with those of one-dimensional full-wave simulations and also with conventional ray tracing (to the extent that one-dimensional and ray-tracing simulations are applicable). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]