Diffraction by a half-plane perpendicular to the distinguished axis of a general gyrotropic medium

Abstract

An exact, closed-form solution is found for the following half-plane diffraction problem: (I) The medium surrounding the half-plane is both electrically and magnetically gyrotropic. (II) The scattering half-plane is perfectly conducting and oriented perpendicular to the distinguished axis of the medium. (III) The incident electromagnetic plane wave propagates in a direction normal to the edge of the half-plane.The formulation of the problem leads to a coupled pair of Wiener–Hopf equations. These had previously been thought insoluble by quadratures, but yield to a newly discovered technique : the Wiener–Hopf–Hilbert method. A basic feature of the problem is its two-mode character i.e. plane waves of both modes are necessary for the spectral representation of the solution. The coupling of these modes is purely due to edge diffraction, there being no reflection coupling. The solution obtained is simple in that the Fourier transforms of the field components are just algebraic functions. Properties of the solution are investigated in some special cases.