Abstract

A special type of surface wave was predicted by M. I. Dyakonov in 1988 [1]. Such waves exist under special conditions at the interface of transparent anisotropic materials, and hens they are lossless. This surface waves require at least one of the two media to be an anisotropic medium, either biaxial or positive uniaxial, and various configurations have been investigated [2]. Recently, we reported the first observation by using a biaxial crystal [3]. In the case of the interface of two identical uniaxial anisotropic media with their optical axes crossed as illustrated in Fig. 1 (a), hybrid surface waves containing both ordinary and extraordinary field components propagate within a narrow angular band, Δθ, with respect to the crystal optical axis OA₁ [4]. This allowed propagation angles are referred to as the angular existence domain.

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