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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Scattering And Absorption of Light in Planetary Regoliths
Published on: July 1, 2019
Nonspecular effects on reflection from absorbing media at and around Brewster's dip
1Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, China. hmlai@phy.cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
We show that, for a TM (or p-state) Gaussian beam incident onto an absorbing medium at and around Brewster's dip, the reflected beam always remains Gaussian and undergoes a Goos-Hänchen-like (GH) shift, an angular shift, a focal shift, and a beam-waist modification, provided that the beam is sufficiently collimated that the third-order change of the (logarithmic) reflection coefficient can be ignored in the angular range of beam divergence. For weak absorption, not only are a large negative GH shift and an odd-functioned-like focal shift with greater magnitude found but also the angular shift, though small by itself, is shown to give an even larger lateral net shift at a distance beyond the Rayleigh range.
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