Conversion from surface wave to surface wave on reflection

Abstract

We discuss the reflection and transmission of an incident surface wave to a pure surface wave state at another interface. This is allowed only for special media parameters: at least one of the media must be magnetic. We found such material characteristics that the obliquely incident surface wave can be transmitted without changing its direction (nevertheless the amplitude varies). For other media parameters, only normally incident surface waves can be converted to surface waves. We propose applications of the predicted conversion as a beam splitter and polarization filter for surface waves.