Beyond Snel's Law: Refraction of a Nano-Beam of Light

Abstract

The refraction of a localized narrow beam is significantly different from that of a plane wave. As the beam width decreases to be in the order of the wavelength, the refraction behavior deviates noticeably from Snel's law, and when the width of a light beam is smaller than about one fifth of the wavelength of the incident light, finite-difference time-domain simulations demonstrate that refraction becomes negligible. That is, the narrow light beam retains its propagation direction even after entering another medium at an oblique angle. The result reveals novel features of nano-beams and may have applications in precise biomedical measurement or micro optical device.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA522317

Entities

People

  • Bing Lin
  • Gorden W. Videen
  • Qiang Fu
  • Wenbo Sun
  • Yongxiang Hu

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Amplitude
  • Continuous Waves
  • Diffraction
  • Electric Fields
  • Electromagnetic Fields
  • Electromagnetic Radiation
  • Finite Difference Time Domain
  • Intensity
  • Laser Beams
  • Lasers
  • Materials
  • Optical Phenomena
  • Plane Waves
  • Radiative Transfer
  • Refraction
  • Refractive Index
  • Three Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Nanofabrication and Microfabrication.
  • Spectroscopy.

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology