Diffraction and iridescence would be on my list of need-to-have, as there would
be edges and thin materials involved... but I'm thinking "calculus" rather than
"quantum" would be good enough, so to speak, in the ugrad physics sense.

Which tool would be good if I need to write a program to vary the parameters of
the model?  I had been looking at Pov-Ray since I could just generate the scene
files as text, but whether pov-like files or an API, it'd be fine as long as I
don't have to use an editor for every single variation.

Thanks for these great suggestions!

The only other way of proceeding I could think of is if there is some optics
simulator designed specifically for scientific estimate, rather than rendering.
(I Googled it, of course, but nothing particularly useful turned up, or else I
didn't have the right search phrase.)

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