Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Nöthnitzer Straße 38, 01187 Dresden, Germany.
Huygens-Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Jun 13;112(23):233901. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.233901. Epub 2014 Jun 10.
We show how careful control of the incident polarization of a light beam close to the Brewster angle gives a giant transverse spatial shift on reflection. This resolves the long-standing puzzle of why such beam shifts transverse to the incident plane (Imbert-Fedorov shifts) tend to be an order of magnitude smaller than the related Goos-Hänchen shifts in the longitudinal direction, which are largest close to critical incidence. We demonstrate that with the proper initial polarization the transverse displacements can be equally large, which we confirm experimentally near Brewster incidence. In contrast to the established understanding, these polarizations are elliptical and angle dependent. We explain the magnitude of the Imbert-Fedorov shift by an analogous change of the symmetry properties for the reflection operators as compared to the Goos-Hänchen shift.
我们展示了如何通过对接近布儒斯特角的光束的入射偏振进行精细控制，在反射时产生巨大的横向空间位移。这解决了长期存在的难题，即为什么这种横向于入射面的光束位移（Imbert-Fedorov 位移）往往比纵向的 Goos-Hänchen 位移小一个数量级，后者在临界入射时最大。我们证明了通过适当的初始偏振，可以使横向位移同样大，我们在接近布儒斯特角入射时通过实验进行了验证。与已有的认识相反，这些偏振是椭圆的，并且依赖于角度。与 Goos-Hänchen 位移相比，我们通过反射算子的对称性质的类似变化来解释 Imbert-Fedorov 位移的大小。
