  We present a generalized 4 $\times$ 4 matrix formalism for the description of
light propagation in birefringent stratified media. In contrast to previous
work, our algorithm is capable of treating arbitrarily anisotropic or
isotropic, absorbing or non-absorbing materials and is free of discontinous
solutions. We calculate the reflection and transmission coefficients and derive
equations for the electric field distribution for any number of layers. The
algorithm is easily comprehensible and can be straight forwardly implemented in
a computer program. To demonstrate the capabilities of the approach, we
calculate the reflectivities, electric field distributions, and dispersion
curves for surface phonon polaritons excited in the Otto geometry for selected
model systems, where we observe several distinct phenomena ranging from
critical coupling to mode splitting, and surface phonon polaritons in
hyperbolic media.
