Let's apply the material from the post on boundary conditions to calculate a transfer matrix. We will consider a TE wave travelling between materials with parameters μ1,ϵ1 and μ2,ϵ2:
There are a few things to note:
This is a TE wave, so the electric field E is \emph{transverse} to the plane of incidence. In this case we chose to let E point into the page, which then determines the direction of the magnetic field since (k,E,B) form a right-handed coordinate system.
The total wavevector k is made up of a component kz in the z-direction and kx in the x direction.
The field on each side is made up of a forward-propagating wave (a1,c1) and a backward propagating wave (b1,d1). On the left we have
We want (a1,b1) to represent the electric field in the first medium, but do we want them to represent E or D? To decide, let's take a look at the boundary conditions:
The electric field is perpendicular to the boundary, so n^⋅(D2−D1)=0. On the other hand since E is perpendicular to n^, you can convince yourself that the other boundary condition for the electric field gives E1=E2. Thus the electric field is continuous across the boundary, so we want (a1,b1) to represent the electric field. In this case if a1,b1 are the fields just before the boundary and c1,d1 the fields just after, we have
E1=E2, a1+b1=c1+d1.
Note that we have chosen coordinates such that the exponentials in Eq. [eqTotalE] are one right at the boundary.
Aside: If we had a TM wave we would choose (a1,b1) to represent H rather than B, since H is what would be continuous across the boundary and we would again have a1+b1=c1+d1. Note that this is just a convenience; you could use B if you really wanted to, and using B=μH the boundary condition would then become (a1+b1)/μ1=(c1+d1)/μ2.
We need one more relation between the a1,b1,c1,d1, and we have two two boundary conditions we haven't used so far:
n^⋅(B2−B1)=0;;n^×(H2−H1)=0.
These are in terms of the magnetic field, which we want to relate to the electric field. This comes from Maxwell's equation:
∇×E=−∂tB=iωB.
What would happen if we took the B equation? Since B is being dotted with n^, we see that the z-component of B is continuous across the boundary. This tells us that (∇×E)z is continuous, which is:
(∇×E)z=∂x∂Ey−∂y∂Ex=∂x∂Ey,
since only Ey is nonzero. Meanwhile the H equation gives us a relation for the x-component of H, and
This is in terms of the frequency of the wave ω, the parameters μi,ϵi of the material, as well as kx, which is a parameter telling us the angle of the input wave. For normal incidence we have kx=0.