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Fundamental optics

Failure of plane waves

Nature Photonics volume 3, pages 319–320 (2009)Cite this article

Light beams striking a flat surface are commonly considered to reflect with perfect symmetry. But highly precise experiments in the infrared region have now confirmed that this is not truly the case in practice, and the size of the angular deviation has now been measured.

On page 337 of this issue, Merano et al.1 present a set of quantitative experiments in which they demonstrate the first observation of the angular deviation at near-infrared wavelengths, along with a supporting theory. The team's simple but effective recipe for the prediction of angular deviations may be important for the design of modern submicrometre photonic technology and angular metrology.

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Figure 1: Sketch of reflection without lateral and angular deviation (black arrows), and with lateral shift D and angular deviation Θout – Θin (red arrows).
Figure 2: Functions of amplitude reflectivity versus angle of incidence Θ in of incidence for light polarized parallel, rp, and perpendicular, rs, to the plane of incidence.

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  1. Günter Nimtz is at the II. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Strasse 77, D-50937 Köln, Germany. G.Nimtz@uni-koeln.de,

    Günter Nimtz

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  1. Günter Nimtz
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Nimtz, G. Failure of plane waves. Nature Photon 3, 319–320 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.85

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.85

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