The asymmetric Goos–Hänchen effect

Abstract

Abstract. We show in which conditions optical gaussian beams, propagating throughout an homogeneous dielectric right angle prism, present an asymmetric Goos-Hänchen (GH) effect. This asymmetric behavior is seen for incidence at critical angles and happens in the propagation direction of the outgoing beam. The asymmetric GH effect can be also seen as an amplification of the standard GH shift. Due to the fact that it only depends on the ratio between the wavelength and the minimal waist size of the incoming gaussian beam, it can be also used to determine one of these parameters. Multiple peaks interference is an additional phenomenon seen in the presence of such asymmetric effects.

Maximal breaking of symmetry at critical angles and a closed-form expression for angular deviations of the Snell law

“…As anticipated in the introduction, the breaking of symmetry [26] in the angular distribution of optical beams plays a fundamental role in the angular deviation from the optical path predicted by the Snell law. In this section, to understand why the breaking of symmetry is responsible for a such fascinating phenomenon, we briefly discuss a maximal breaking of symmetry for an asymmetrically modeled beam.…”

“…For example, for a dielectric block with parallel sides the outgoing beam is expected to be parallel to the incoming one. Angular deviations [21][22][23][24][25] from the optical path predicted by the Snell law are a direct consequence of the breaking of symmetry [26] in the angular distribution. In this paper, we show how to maximize this breaking of symmetry and give an analytic formula for the Snell law angular deviations.…”

Axial dependence of optical weak measurements in the critical region

“…[27], the distance between the peaks of the outgoing optical beam. We recall, that in the critical region, due to the breaking of symmetry [22], peak and mean value does not necessarily coincide. In view of these comments, our discussion can be seen as a complementary work to that one which appears in refs.…”

“…This shift, which is probably one of the clearest manifestations of the evanescent nature of light, represents an additional contribution to the geometrical optical path predicted by the Snell law [13,14]. This quantum effect is still subject of careful and broad investigation and continues to stimulate new discussions [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Of particular interest tothe study presented in this paper, it is the GH shift frequency crossover [23].…”

Closed-form expression for the Goos-Hänchen lateral displacement

“…Notwithstanding the great interest in the literature [11][12][13][14][15] (for clear and detailed reviews on the GH shift see Refs. [16,17]), the divergence problem of the Artmann formula was often overcome by using numerical calculations [14,18,19] to fit the experimental curves [7][8][9][10].…”