Reection, transmission, absorption and Frustrated total

reection of electromagnetic waves

Joan Mendoza
February 2015

Abstract agitated lattice thus convert electromagnetic energy

This practical lab aims to test the transmission, re-
ection and absorption of three dierent materials
when microwaves impinge on their surfaces. Also,
was considered quantitatively the eect of frustrate
the total internal reection when waves travel across
a thick, third medium, with lower index refraction.
For Frustrated total internal reection the relation
between intensity and distance of parallel surfaces
was determined
into heat. In this way absorption of radiant energy
by a material is a function of its conductivity.
For a dielectric there are no free or conduction elec-
trons and = 0.
In order to make a relation between reectance and
transmittance is necesary to recall the power per unit
area, the Poyting vector, given by :
S = c2 0 E B

If we consider the average value of its magnitud,

which is the irradiance:
1 Introduction.
c0 2
I = hSi = E (1)
When microwaves are incident on the interface of two 2 0
media are either reected, transmitted through, or
absorbed by the material. These factors depends where c is the invariant constant of speed of light,

strongly of the caracteristics of the medium which 0 is the electric permitivity and E0 is the electric eld.
the wave impinges, in general are clasied by being Let Ii , Ir and It be the incident, reected and trans-

conductors and dielectrics. mitted irradiance, respectively. The cross-sectional

The characteristic feature of conducting media is areas are acosi , acost , acosr . Thus, the energy

the presence of a number of free electric charge, i.e. per unit time owing in the incident beam is Ii acosi ,
unbound from atoms. For metals these charges are in the same way for the transmittance and the re-

electrons and their motion constitutes a current. The ectance. Of course the angle is taken from the nor-

current per unit of area caused by the application of mal of the surface. Now let dene R as the ratio of

the reected irradiance to the incident power:
a electric eld E is related to the conductivity of



the medium by J = E. For a idelaized perfect
Ir acosr Ir
conductor the conductivity is innite, in this case, R = (2)
Ii acosi Ii
electrons just would follow the electric eld alterna-
tions without any restoring forces, no natural frecuen-
Where r = i . In the same way, the transmittance
cies, no absoption, only re-emission of waves (Hecht,
T:
2002). In real metals the conduction electrons un- It cost
dergo collisions with imperfections and the thermally
T (3)
Ii cosi

1
 From equation 1, irradiance is proportional to the
square of electric eld, and electric eld is propor-
tional to the electric potential.
I 2
The law of energy conservation tells that the to-
tal energy of the incident microwaves is equal to the
sum of the reected, transmitted, and absorbed en-
ergies (UCLA, 2004), so, the relation between the in-
cidence irradiance and the transmitted, reected and
absorbed is:
E02 = R2 + T 2 + A2 = Ii = Ir + It + IA (4)
Thus, the percentage fA of the incident microwave
intensity absorbed by a material is
E02 R2 T 2
 
fA = 100% (5)
E02
When a light, or in this case, microwave is inci-
dent on the interface of two media, where medium 1
(n1 )is greater than the index of medium 2 (n2 )and
the angle of incidence exceeds the critical angle, to-
tal internal reection occurs (Zhu, 1986). The in-
cident microwave is reected completely back into
medium 1. From Fresnel equations (Apendix) is ob-
tained that r r = rk rk = 1 and R = 1, which means
that Ir = Ii and It = 0. Although there must be a
trasmitted wave, it cannot on average, carry energy
across the boundary. From experiments, have shown
that energy actually circulates back and forth across
the interface, resulting on the average in zero net ow
through the boundary into the second medium. This
disturbance advances in the direction perpendicular
to the boundary and is known as evanescent wave or
Surface wave.
Now, if other medium (may be or may be not with
the same index refraction) is located against the rst
one letting a gap of air between them it can be seen
that total internal reection to no reection occur
gradually as the air gap is reduced
This eect was rstly developed by E. E. Hall, in
his paper published on Physical Review in 1902. He
presented a thoerical calculation for the transmis-
sion coecient on the incident light. With regard
2
to the experimental verication of the relation be-
tween the transmission coecient and the separation
media 1 and 3 Hall wrote: There seems at present
no method for experimentally testing the theory for
two media in the case of light waves. It would seem
feasible, however, to test the theory with short elec-
tric waves. This the writer hopes to do at some fu-
ture time. However that exactly such experiments
had been performed by Bose as early as 1897 using
the same method as in this experimental lab practice,
see gure 1. Bose veried the transmission coecient
versus separation predictions of the theory based on
the Maxwell equations (Zhu, 1986).
Figure 1: Sketch for Frustrated Total internal Reec-
tion using two rectagle prism made by E.E. Hall
When the surface wave extends with appreciable
amplitude across the air into a nearby region occu-
pied by a higher index medium (n1 ), energy may ow
through the gap in what is known as Frustrated to-
tal internal reection (FTIR). In other words, even
when the surface wave has traversed the gap, it still
has energy to drive electrons in the third medium;
thus, electrons will generate a wave that signicantly
alters the eld conguration, thereby permitting en-
ergy ow. The transmitted irradiance is given by
It = I0 e2d (6)
Where d is the gap width and is the attenuation
coecient given by
q
2
= k2 (n12 ) sin2 (1 ) 1 (7)
 The quantitative develop of the the FTIR is the
apendix.
The Frustrated total internal reection nowadays
has a great practical use for the study of thin lms,
spectroscopy and the recently studies on surfaces
non-linear optics and engineering application of opti-
cal lters
2 Measurements and results
The distance from the material plate to the trans-
mittern and receiver antenna heads was 40cm, this
distance generates a maximum reection signal.
In order to measure the incident irradiance Ii, the
receiver was located 40 cm from the transmitter with-
out any plate. After, the set up in gure 2 was used
to measure the reection irradiance. This method
was the same for three materials.
For the transmission characteristic, the receiver
was set up at 80 cm from the transmitter head. The

2.1 Transmitting and reecting char-

acteristics of glass, acrylic glass
and metal.
In order to determine the reecting and trasmitting
characterisitcs of: glass, acrylic glass and metal the
follow materials were used:
plates were located in the middle of transmitter and
receiver and then the irradiance was measured. For
comparison the tranmition through air (without any
plate) irradiance was also measured. The absorption
irradiance was obtained from equation (5)
The values obtained are shown in table 1.

1. Microwave transmitter klystron of frecuency f=

9.45 GHz Table 1: Reecting and transmitting voltages mea-
sured for glass, acrylic glass, metal and air only.
2. Microwave receiver. ReectionV TransmissionV
V 0, 005v
3. Microwave power supply, 220 V AC
Metal -0,48 0,00
4. Metal screen (300300)mm, width Acrylic glass -0,11 -0,52
(0, 17 0, 005) cm Glass -0,05 -0,23
Air -0.91 -0,46
5. Glass plate (300400)mm, width
(0, 59 0, 005) cm
6. Acrylic plate (150150)mm, width
(0, 26 0, 005) cm
For the reection characteristic conguration of the
experiment is shown in gure 2

Figure 3: Comparison, in percentage, between re-

Figure 2: Experimental set-up to determine reection ecting, transmitting and absorving with the incident
characteristics (Phywe). irradiance

3
2.2 Frustated Total Internal Reec-
tion. Table 2: Distance between parallel surfaces of two
prism and voltage of the transmited irradiance
Distanced VoltageV
d(mm)= 0, 005mm v=0,0005 v

In this experiment the transmitter antenna was ubi- 0 0,360

cated in front of one side of the rst prism, the second 1 0,370
side was covered by a metal screen which helped to 2 0,260
avoid any other incident wave apart from the trans- 3 0,200
mitter. In front of the last third side was set up the 4 0,170
second prism, such as, one of its cateto was parallel 5 0,160
to rst prism. The receiver was perpendicular of the 6 0,130
plane of incidence and aligned with the transmitter. 7 0,110
8 0,090
In order to obtain the relationship between the 9 0,060
transmitted irradiance and the distance from the pris- 10 0,050
matic surfaces the parallel catetos were separated in 11 0,040
steps of 1mm up to 20mm with a Vernier caliper. 12 0,030
The distance was delicate measured for mantein the 13 0,020
parallelism between the two surfaces.
14 0,020
15 0,017
The set up for this experiment is shown in gure 3
16 0,013
17 0,011
18 0,009
19 0,006

Figure 4: Experimental set-up for Frustrated Total

internal reection (Phywe).

Figure 5: Relationship between distance of parallel

The values obtained are shown in table 2. surfaces and transmited irradiance

4
 The attenuation coecient is obtained from 4 Bibliography
equation 6 where I0 = 2808, 9 and It can take any
value from the graph or the values from table 2 which
must be squared and multiplied by 1000 to keep the
units, then the coecient is

ln (I0 ) ln (It )
=
2d

The index refraction of the material of the prism

is obtained by equation 7. Here as the plane waves
should impinge with 600 with the second surface of
0
the prism 1 = 60 , the wave vector of the transmit-
ted wave dened asK2 = 2
= 2 fc = 1, 98cm

Table 3: Index refraction of the prism n12 and error

from the real n12 value
index refraction error%
max 1,1580, 002 22,78
min 1,1540, 002 23,01

3 Conclusion and Discusion

Based of the atomic property of the materia, was de-

terminated the transmitted, reected and absorption
characteristics of glass, metal and acrylic glass.
was expected, in metal, the reected radiation inten-
As
Hecht, E. (2002). The propagation of light. In Optics
(4th ed.). Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
sity was considerable but from calculus the absorp-
tion also had a important percentage as seen in g-
ure 3. This quantity maybe is not that correct and
a portion of reected intensity was not measured in
the receiver antenna. For glass, and acrylic glass, the
characteristics aligned better with the theory.
In the Frustrated total internal reection was found
that the transmitted radiation intensity decrease ex-
ponentially with the distance d between the parallel
surfaces of prism. Also when the gap between prism
tends to cero, the total internal reection is frus-
trated. Even though a correct relation and tendency
was found, the index of refraction obtained from the
attenuation coecient had a considerable error, this
error could be caused mainly by the deviation from Zhu, S. (1986). Frustrated Tontal interanal Reec-
the shape of the plane waves on the incidence to the tion: A demostration and review. American Associ-
prism surface. ation of Physic Teachers, 54, 7-7.

5
Apendix and

kt
q
Development of FTIR and Surface waves k tx = sini = kt n2ti sin2 i 1
In the case of Total internal reection the Fresnel nti
equations were considered:
is the attenuation coecient.

1/2 In this way
cos1 n2ti sin2 1
r =  
cos1 + (n2ti sin2 1 )
1/2
y kt xsini
Et = E0t e expi
nti wt
and

1/2
n2ti cos1 n2ti sin2 1
rk = 1/2
n2ti cos1 + (n2ti sin2 1 )
Since sinc = nti when i > c , sini > nti and
both r and rk become complex values, but this can
be solved making r r = rk rk which are equal to 1.
Thus R = 1 which means that Ir = Ii and It = 0

For the transmitted wave, the electric eld is:

h

Et = E0t expi kt 
i
r wt ,

where and without consider the z component

kt 
r = ktx x + kty y

Also

ktx x = kt sint kty y = kt cos

Using Snall-Descartes Law

1/2
sin2 i

kt cost = kt 1
n2ti

Since sini > nti

1/2
sin2 i

kty = ikt 1
n2ti

Now must be considered just the negative exponen-

tial, because the positive has no physical meaning.
Also it can be dened:

1/2
sin2 i

kty = ikt 1 = i
n2ti