Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-short-options-paper-shared-by-prelims-and-parts-a-and-b-of-the-physics-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2015/s12/2/1/solution

Let the interface be , with glass at and water at , and choose parallel to the incident beam's tangential component. Define as the vacuum wavenumber, with glass and water refractive indices and . Continuity of phase along the interface fixes . In water, the dispersion relation is , so above the critical angle,
Choose the positive imaginary part because a field growing exponentially into the water would be unphysical. The evanescent field in total internal reflection is therefore
It propagates in phase parallel to the interface but decays normally. Here is the transmitted field amplitude at the interface; relating it to the incident amplitude requires the appropriate polarization-dependent Fresnel equations. If the symbol instead denotes the incident glass wavenumber, replace every vacuum in the formula by ; equivalently and . This states the wavenumber convention left implicit in the source.

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