Abstract

Harmonic inhomogeneous plane waves (HIPW) are stationary solutions of the Max-well equations for an unbounded medium and take the following form: where k is the a complex wavevector. Since k is complex the waves may be exponentially decreasing or increasing in a direction perpendicular to the direction of propagation (in a nonabsorbing medium). Although not fully physical because they are not square intergrable, HIPW remain very useful in a number of problems as do plane waves¹,², for example the description of evanescent and surface waves and also the well known exact Sommerfield solution to the diffraction of a planewave by a conducting halfplane use HIPW.

© 1990 Optical Society of America