Exciting Voigt surface waves

电磁表面波在两种不同配对材料的界面上传播。自二十世纪初以来，人们已经发现了几种不同类型的电磁表面波。最近，从理论上发现了两种新的电磁表面波。这些新类型的电磁表面波从根本上不同于所有先前已知类型的电磁表面波，因为这些表面波在界面上局部化的方式。例如，这些新表面波的独特局域化特性适合于涉及光通信和光学传感的应用。到目前为止，所发展的理论只确定了理想构型下这些新表面波的存在。这些表面波如何在实际构型中被激发的问题还没有得到解决。建议进一步发展理论，以适应这些新的表面波的实际构型的激发。这项研究包括通过棱镜或通过衍射光栅将配对材料的界面耦合到入射光。此外，到目前为止发展起来的理论只确定了最简单的配对材料存在这些新的表面波。更复杂的配对材料为这些新的表面波提供了相当大的范围。因此，建议发展该理论以适应更复杂的伙伴材料，包括双各向异性伙伴材料和非均匀材料。双各向异性材料比各向异性或各向同性材料提供了更大的表面波传播范围，这是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。这种复杂的配对材料可以促进多个表面波的激发，这是例如在光通信和光学传感中潜在应用的理想特性。

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.