Abstract
Electromagnetic surface waves guided by the planar interface of an orthorhombic dielectric material and an isotropic dielectric material were analyzed theoretically and numerically. Both naturally occurring minerals (crocoite, tellurite, and cerussite) and engineered materials were considered as the orthorhombic partnering material. In addition to conventional Dyakonov surface waves, the analysis revealed that as many as two Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves can propagate in each quadrant of the interface plane, depending upon the birefringence of the orthorhombic partnering material. The coexistence of two Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves marks a fundamental departure from the corresponding case involving the planar interface of a uniaxial dielectric material and an isotropic dielectric material for which only one Dyakonov–Voigt surface wave is possible. The two Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves propagate in different directions in each quadrant of the interface plane, with different relative phase speeds and different penetration depths. Furthermore, the localization characteristics of the two Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves at the planar interface are quite different: the Dyakonov–Voigt surface wave with the higher relative phase speed is much less tightly localized at the interface in the isotropic dielectric partnering material.
Highlights
Electromagnetic surface waves guided by the planar interface of an orthorhombic dielectric material and an isotropic dielectric material were analyzed theoretically and numerically
In addition to Dyakonov surface waves, it was recently discovered that the planar interface of a uniaxial dielectric material and an isotropic dielectric material can guide the propagation of Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves[10,11]
The fields of conventional surface waves decay exponentially with distance from the interface whereas the decay of fields of a Dyakonov–Voigt surface wave is specified by the product of an exponential function and a linear function of distance from the interface in the anisotropic partnering material
Summary
Numerical values were chosen for the relative permittivity parameters for this purpose, keeping in mind that the inequality (14) must be satisfied for material A in order for Dyakonov–Voigt surface waves to exist. (i) naturally occurring minerals with relatively modest birefringence and (ii) engineered materials with large birefringence. Three biaxial minerals were selected to function as material A for the first numerical study: along with the values birefringence nA =. Both optic ray axes of these minerals are arranged to lie in the xy plane with the y axis as the bisector, the angle δA being the half-angle between the two optic ray axes. While all three minerals were taken to be o rthorhombic[28], we note parenthetically that crocoite exists in monoclinic form[35]
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