Exact image theory for the Sommerfeld half-space problem, part III: General formulation

Abstract

The general Sommerfeld problem with both <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">\epsilon</tex> and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">\mu</tex> discontinuous and a source consisting of arbitrarily oriented electric and/or magnetic dipoles at the same location is considered in terms of image theory. The problem is formulated with electric and magnetic fields instead of potential quantities resulting in a vector transmission-line interpretation of the Fourier transformed problem. The image sources are seen to be located in complex space expressable in terms of a certain basic image current function, which was encountered in part II of this paper on the vertical electric dipole problem. The horizontal electric/magnetic dipole image is solved and found to consist of both vertical and horizontal current components. The image concept is generalized to the most general three-dimensional sources. As a check, the well-known reflection coefficient method is obtained as the far-field approximation of the present theory.