Exciting Voigt surface waves

电磁表面波在两种不同材料的界面上传播。自世纪开始以来，已经识别出几种不同类型的电磁表面波。最近在理论上发现了两种新的电磁表面波。这些新型电磁表面波与所有先前已知类型的电磁表面波的根本区别在于这些表面波在界面处局部化的方式。这些新的表面波的独特的局部化特性使它们自身适用于例如涉及光通信和光传感的应用。到目前为止，发展的理论只建立了这些新的表面波的存在一个理想化的配置。如何在实际结构中激发这些表面波的问题还没有得到解决。建议进一步发展的理论，以适应这些新的表面波的实际配置的激发。这项研究涉及到通过棱镜或衍射光栅将伙伴材料的界面与入射光耦合。此外，迄今为止发展的理论只为最简单的可能的伙伴材料建立了这些新表面波的存在。这些新的表面波的相当大的范围是由更复杂的伙伴材料提供的。因此，建议发展理论，以适应更复杂的伙伴关系材料，包括双各向异性伙伴关系材料和非均匀材料。双各向异性材料比各向异性或各向同性材料提供更大的表面波传播范围，因为电场和磁场之间的内在耦合以及与双各向异性材料相关的更大的本构参数空间。这种复杂的伙伴材料可以促进多个表面波的激发，这对于例如光通信和光感测中的潜在应用是期望的性质。

Electromagnetic surface waves propagate at the interface of two dissimilar partnering materials. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, several different types of electromagnetic surface wave have been identified. Very recently two new types of electromagnetic surface wave were theoretically discovered. These new types of electromagnetic surface waves differ fundamentally from all previously known types of electromagnetic surface waves by the manner in which these surface waves are localized at the interface. The unique localization properties of these new surface waves lend themselves to applications involving optical communications and optical sensing, for examples. To date, the theory developed only establishes the existence of these new surface waves for an idealized configuration. The question of how these surface waves may be excited in a practical configuration has not yet been addressed. It is proposed to further develop the theory to accommodate the excitation of these new surface waves for practical configurations. This research involves coupling the interface of the partnering materials to incident light by means of a prism or alternatively by means of a diffraction grating. Furthermore, the theory developed to date only establishes the existence of these new surface waves for the simplest possible partnering materials. Considerably greater scope for these new surface waves is offered by more complex partnering materials. It is therefore proposed to develop the theory to accommodate more complex partnering materials, including bianisotropic partnering materials and nonhomogeneous materials. Bianisotropic materials offer much greater scope for surface-wave propagation than do anisotropic or isotropic materials, because of intrinsic coupling between electric and magnetic fields and the much larger constitutive parameter space that is associated with bianisotropic materials. Such complex partnering materials may facilitate the excitation of multiple surface waves, which is a desirable property for potential applications in optical communications and optical sensing, for examples.