Philip;
Your attempt to model the physical behavior of a fresnel lens using POV-Ray
is probably doomed to failure, even with the "photon patch", because a
fresnel lens, unlike an ordinary glass lens, does not "bend" light by virtue
of slowing down light differentially along the radial axis, but by wave
interference and the mutual interaction of an infinite number of spherical
wavelets eminating from the disturbance, in this case, concentric circular
grooves on a transparent substrate. Since the photon patch probably relies
on a simple particle model and not a wave model of light, it is doubtful
that you will be able to reproduce this effect. To realistically model light
in all its glory, one must incorporate both particle and wave behavior. The
dominant property observed depends on the particular phenomenon being
studied. Specular reflection could be considered "most particle like", and
Young's two-slit experiment "most wave like".

People in the oil business, also perform "ray tracing" but their software
does in fact treat the energy, in this case a mechanical disturbance, as
waves, with frequency, amplitude, phase, mode, and polarization. Also,
seismic simulations are notorious for being computationally intensive.

Gregg
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