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  Total reflection for perpendicular incidence

+ 3 like - 0 dislike
1341 views

Are there any materials, which give similar effects to total internal reflection, but for perpendicular incidence?

Here, by this phenomena I mean:

  • 100% reflection for bulk medium,
  • no absorption (including no absorption inside material),
  • finite evanescence depth (even if very small).

I am asking, as some of my calculations gave this result. Yet, I am not sure whether this result is physical (i.e. can happen) or practical (i.e. there is a system exhibiting such phenomenon).

I does works that way for dielectric mirrors. I am curious if there are any "uniform" materials exhibiting such effect. By "uniform" I mean spatial period (or any kind of other structure) much, much smaller than (vacuum) wavelength.

(Obviously, it goes beyond refraction index, so please don't write it is not possible with a fixed n, because I know.)

asked Dec 4, 2014 in Theoretical Physics by Piotr Migdal (1,260 points) [ revision history ]
edited Dec 4, 2014 by Piotr Migdal
Do you really mean "internal"?
Reflection from metals will do or not?
I don't know in "internal" is the most fortunate word here. In any case I mean: exponential decay of the field in the medium (from which the reflection occurs) without any absorption. For metal - I was thinking about it. But AFAIR (I can be wrong) in metals reflection is due high absorption for transmission.
Then simply "reflection" would do.

In metals there are normal and anomalous skin effects with evanescent behavior.

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