Spatial structure of electromagnetic field diffracted by a sub-wavelength slot in a thick conducting screen

Abstract

The eigen-mode technique of rigorous diffraction theory is employed for computation of spatial structure of electromagnetic field, arising under diffraction of a plane wave by a narrow slot of the width of the order of the wavelength or smaller in a perfectly conducting screen of finite thickness. The effects of little step change and of strong enhancement for relative averaged energy density are investigated in dependence of the slot width and depth. It is shown that the field in a space behind the slot represents the sum of a field, slowly and monotonically decreasing in the directions away from a slot, and a harmonic field with sinusoidal spatial inhomogeneities of the order of the wavelength. It is established that the comparative contributions of these two field constituents are unequal for various spatial components of the electric and magnetic fields, and also that the contribution of the first constituent decreases with increase of the slot width.