Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

"The ability of prisms to couple incident VEM radiation from a laser beam into leaky waves or to launch surface electromagnetic waves has been investigated. We have set out to discover wheth~r or not a single prism placed above an air-metal interface can be used to couple light from a laser beam into leaky electromagnetic waves. We have then attempted to relate the single prism technique to tb.e double prism technique for launching surface waves. We have also compared the coupling into a single interface to that into a waveguide.

We have found that prisms are unable to couple incident laser light in the form of a laser beam with a gaussian profile into leaky surface waves efficiently. Moreover, we have found that previous work in this area has been misleading to the extent that the ATR method is capable of exciting leaky surface waves and measuring optical properties.

We have also found that unlike the optical waveguide case where modes do exist at the gap heights necessary for efficient coupling such modes do not exist in the ATR case. Furthermore, we have found that although there is an experimental ATR type minimum and an exponentially decaying tail in the reflected beam profile, the optical constants cannot be obtained in a trivial fashion from the experimental data.

From this we have concluded that the experimental procedure is acceptable for finding the coupling angle associated with the dip in the reflectivity and hence the real part of the x component of the propagation vector which is related to the index of refraction. We have also concluded also that the experimental configuration suffers from the fact that the apparatus geometry is a critical parameter in that the beam width at the prism base is determined by refraction of the laser beam incident upon the prism"-- Abstract, pp. ii-iii

Advisor(s)

Alexander, Ralph William, Jr.

Committee Member(s)

Brown, Harry A., 1925-1995
Bell, Robert John, 1934-
Rivers, Jack L.
Pagano, Sylvester J., 1924-2006

Department(s)

Physics

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Physics

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Publication Date

Spring 1984

Pagination

viii, 85 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (page 85)

Rights

© 1984 Gerald Kent Sirotiak, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 5066

Print OCLC #

11699915

Download

Included in

Physics Commons

Share

 
COinS