Simulation of polarization effects in diffraction problems of optical recording

The reflection of a focused spot from a digital versatile disk (DVD) depends strongly on the polarization of the light. When the spot is polarized such that the magnetic field is mainly parallel to the tracks on the disk, the reflected near field is very sensitive to the width and depth of the pit. Simulations suggest that also the far-field intensity distribution is sensitive to subwavelength features. Several modifications of the pit geometry of the DVD format are considered with the aim of increasing storage densities.