Electromagnetic fields in spatially dispersive media

Abstract

The structure of the electromagnetic field in a spatially dispersive model medium occupying a plane parallel slab is obtained, free of several customary ad hoc assumptions made in other theories. The model medium is characterized by a dielectric response function appropriate to the neighborhood of an isolated-exciton transition frequency. The exact mode expansion for the electromagnetic field in the slab is derived and it is found that, unlike in the case of an unbounded medium, a single plane wave cannot be generated in the slab. An elementary solution (a single mode) is found to consist, in general, of six plane waves (four transverse and two longitudinal ones), coupled by two linear relations. These relations are shown to be equivalent to two nonlocal boundary conditions (of the form encountered in connection with the Ewald-Oseen extinction theorem in molecular optics), which the nonlocal contribution to the induced polarization must satisfy on the faces of the slab. This result resolves a long-standing controversy about the nature of the so-called additional boundary conditions that are generally believed to be required for solving problems of interaction of an electromagnetic field with a spatially dispersive medium. The results are applied to the problem of refraction and reflection on a spatially dispersive model medium occupying a half-space and a generalization of the classic formulas of Fresnel are obtained. The behavior of the reflected and transmitted waves as functions of the angle of incidence and of the frequency are illustrated by several figures. Our results are shown to differ from those obtained by Pekar in a well-known paper. The difference is traced to the nature of the additional boundary conditions postulated by Pekar; they are found to be inconsistent with the additional boundary conditions that we derive as an exact consequence of Maxwell's theory. Comparisons with several other theories, especially with those of Sein and Birman and of Maradudin and Mills are also made.