Linear canonical transformations in phase space: the Gabor frames approach

Linear Canonical Transformations are phase space deformations that can be used to describe linear optical systems. In geometric optics they correspond to the transformations of the light rays during propagation in arbitrary media, while in wave optics they describe the evolution of the space-frequency components. Although their meaning is non-ambiguous in the former case, in the latter it depends on the specific space-frequency decomposition of the wavefield. In this paper we gather several results from theoretical time-frequency analysis with Gabor Frames and provide a preliminary analysis on the implementation of phase space deformation for linear optical systems.