Why does phase of reflected electric field shifted by a pi compared to my calculation

  • 6 November 2019
  • 1 reply
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Userlevel 6
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For example, you can open the following built-in sample.

\Documents\Zemax\Samples\Sequential\Tilted systems & prisms\Prism using total internal reflection.zmx



If you check the "Phase vs. Angle", you can see the phase delay introduced to S and P polarization. 





And if you check in Wiki page, you can find the phase delay for P polarization has a shift of pi compared to the result in OpticStudio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_internal_reflection#Phase_shifts







Why is shift happen?

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Userlevel 6
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This is mainly about convention. There are two choices for phase shift for the reflected ray, either Abelès (thin film) or Nebraska Muller (ellipsometry).



A good explanations can found in the following documents:

https://spie.org/news/phase-matters?SSO=1

The following is an abstract.





In OpticStudio, we use the thin film convention. Therefore, when calculating the phase retardance, the following equation should be used.



 

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