Wednesday, May 31, 2017

optics - Theoretical penetration limit for evanescent waves


Consider a problem in classical electrodynamics, when a monochromatic beam experiences total internal refraction when traveling from a medium with n>1 to a medium with refractive index 1 - see schematic below. Using Fresnel equations one gets the penetration depth d=1k2x+k2y(2πλ)2,

where kx and ky are the perpendicular components of the wave vector, and λ is the wavelength (in the vacuum).


At least in theory, it is possible to have an evanescent wave of an arbitrary penetration depth d. However, in such case one needs to use a plane wave, thus a wave of unbounded spatial size. For a beam with a finite variance x2 (and ky=0 to reduce the problem to two dimensions) there seems to be a relation that d/x2 is lesser than a constant.


The main questions: is there any strict bound in the form of a measure of penetration depthf(transversal beam size,n)

(perhaps in the style of Heisenberg uncertainty principle, or using other moments of x, y and d)?


Schematic of an evanescent wave size




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