2003/07/02 by Alexander Figotin, A. Figotin, Ilya Vitebskiy +1 · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Metamaterials and Metasurfaces Applications #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Photonic and Optical Devices #physics.gen-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.68.036609
text and 9 figures
arxiv created 2003/07/02 · openalex publication_date 2003/09/17 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the classical scattering problem of a plane electromagnetic wave incident on the surface of semi-infinite periodic stratified media incorporating anisotropic dielectric layers with special oblique orientation of the anisotropy axes. We demonstrate that an obliquely incident light, upon entering the periodic slab, gets converted into an abnormal grazing mode with huge amplitude and zero normal component of the group velocity. This mode cannot be represented as a superposition of extended and evanescent contributions. Instead, it is related to a general (non-Bloch) Floquet eigenmode with the amplitude diverging linearly with the distance from the slab boundary. Remarkably, the slab reflectivity in such a situation can be very low, which means an almost 100% conversion of the incident light into the axially frozen mode with the electromagnetic energy density exceeding that of the incident wave by several orders of magnitude. The effect can be realized at any desirable frequency, including optical and UV frequency range. The only essential physical requirement is the presence of dielectric layers with proper oblique orientation of the anisotropy axes. Some practical aspects of this phenomenon are considered.