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Derivation of Snell's Law

Physics Asked by pmac on October 30, 2020

I am following an example in the book "Electromagnetic Waves and Antennas" by S. Orfanidis. He has two planes waves incident on both sides of a boundary. Here, $k_{pm} = hat{x} k_{x pm} + hat{y} k_{y pm} + hat{z} k_{z pm} $ is the forward and backward propagation vector for the left medium and $k’_{pm} = hat{x} k’_{x pm} + hat{y} k’_{y pm} + hat{z} k’_{z pm} $ is the forward and backward propagation vector for the right medium. For the boundary condition at z=0 he writes

$vec{E}_+ e^{-j(k_{x+}x + k_{y+}y)} + vec{E}_- e^{-j(k_{x-}x + k_{y-}y)} = vec{E’}_+ e^{-j(k’_{x+}x + k’_{y+}y)} + vec{E’}_- e^{-j(k’_{x-}x + k’_{y-}y)}$

where the $vec{E}$ ‘s are the tangential component of the electric fields and the prime denotes the second medium.

I understand that for all points on the boundary, LHS=RHS needs to hold. What I don’t find so obvious is that from this he says,

$ e^{-j(k_{x+}x + k_{y+}y)} = e^{-j(k_{x-}x + k_{y-}y)} = e^{-j(k’_{x+}x + k’_{y+}y)} = e^{-j(k’_{x-}x + k’_{y-}y)} $.

How would we prove this?

Subsequently, I don’t see how $k_{x+} = k_{x-} = k’_{x+} = k’_{x-}$ and $k_{y+} = k_{y-} = k’_{y+} = k’_{y-}$ can be derived from this.

One Answer

The direction of wave propagation and the orientation of the axes might be different but the diagram below shows you that the wave-number across a boundary must be continuous otherwise the phases of the reflected and transmitted waves are not the same as the incident waves at the boundary.

enter image description here

The blue and red lines are wavefronts along which the oscillating particles are all in phase.
In this diagram the wavefronts are shown to be exactly one wavelength, $lambda,,lambda_alpha,,lambda_beta$, apart.

At position $a$ on the interface one of the boundary conditions is that the sum of the displacement of the incident and the reflected waves must equal the displacement of the refracted (transmitted) wave which I think is where the tearing membrane idea comes from.

That being so the same must happen at positions $b,,c,,d$ which I think is an application of translational symmetry.

In the diagram you will see that $lambda_{rm y} = lambda_{rm alpha y}= lambda_{rm beta y}$ and since $lambda = frac{2pi}{k},$ etc then $k_{rm y} = k_{rm alpha y}= k_{rm beta y}$

Answered by Farcher on October 30, 2020

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