Plane-Wave Reflection and Transmission at Arbitrarily Oriented and Charged Planar Interfaces between Lossy Isotropic Media

Abstract

A general algorithm for calculating the reflection and refraction of nonuniform plane waves from an arbitrarily oriented and charged planar interface between two lossy isotropic media is proposed based on the decomposition of the complex wave vector and complex wave numbers with respect to the unit normal vector of the interface. According to the complex vector analysis, the exact definition of the complex angles of incidence, reflection and refraction are presented and applied in the complex forms of Snell's law and Fresnel equations to quickly and correctly calculate the complex wave vectors and the complex electric fields of the reflected and refracted waves at a charged interface where the surface charge densities are considered. Two practical examples are given to demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed methodology. The method may find applications in the fields of remote sensing, light ray-tracing and the interaction of electromagnetic waves with absorbing media.