  The concept of a plane scatterer that was developed earlier for scalar waves
is generalized so that polarization of light is included. Starting from a
Lippmann-Schwinger formalism for vector waves, we show that the Green function
has to be regularized before T-matrices can be defined in a consistent way.
After the regularization, optical modes and Green functions are determined
exactly for finite structures built up of an arbitrary number of parallel
planes, at arbitrary positions, and where each plane can have different optical
properties. The model is applied to the special case of finite crystals
consisting of regularly spaced identical planes, where analytical methods can
be taken further and only light numerical tasks remain. The formalism is used
to calculate position- and orientation-dependent spontaneous-emission rates
inside and near the finite photonic crystals. The results show that emission
rates and reflection properties can differ strongly for scalar and for vector
waves. The finite size of the crystal influences the emission rates. For
parallel dipoles close to a plane, emission into guided modes gives rise to a
peak in the frequency-dependent emission rate.
