Diffraction of a Gaussian beam around a strip mask

Abstract

A theoretical treatment is given for the diffraction of a Gaussianbeam around an opaque strip mask. Such situations arise frequentlyin the diffraction of laser beams around wires and fibers. Scalarderivations are given for the Fraunhofer and Fresnel regions with bothdevelopments, leading to similar forms of rapidly convergent series forthe field at an observation plane. Predictions show good agreementwith measurements on the diffraction patterns from wires.