Lateral displacement of a Gaussian beam reflected from absorbing media

Lateral displacements of well-focused beams reflected from absorbing media are demonstrated in this paper. The incident beam is modeled as a tapered wave with a Gaussian spectrum. The field solutions are obtained on both sides of the interface by solving analytically from Maxwell's equations and by matching the boundary conditions at the interface. Numerical simulations are presented and the field values as well as the time-averaged power densities are computed. The influences of the polarization, the angle of incidence and the beam width on the displacement are discussed. The origin of the displacement lies in the absorption of the media, for which there is a phase shift between the incident and reflected waves. Because of this phase shift, the center of the reflected beam does not coincide with that of the incident one, similar to the Goos–Hänchen shift.