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European Journal of Physics

A visual classroom demonstration of frustrated total internal reflection as an analogue to optical tunnelling

Rabiya Salman, Shama Rashid, Muhammad Sabieh Anwar

Published Sep 20, 2013• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Frustrated total internal reflection is presented as a visually attractive and convenient classroom demonstration. Optical evanescent waves penetrating through a dielectric barrier is a classical analogue to quantum mechanical tunnelling. We use the traditional double prism arrangement to demonstrate the pickup and relaunching of the evanescent wave. Total internal reflection could be completely frustrated by the insertion of an index matching fluid.

DOI
10.1088/0143-0807/34/6/1439

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Frustrated total internal reflection is presented as a visually attractive and convenient classroom demonstration. Optical evanescent waves penetrating through a dielectric barrier is a classical analogue to quantum mechanical tunnelling. We use the traditional double prism arrangement to demonstrate the pickup and relaunching of the evanescent wave. Total internal reflection could be completely frustrated by the insertion of an index matching fluid.
Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) has been researched since the time of Sir Issac Newton. In this paper, its application in modern optics is reviewed. A theoretical description of the phenomenon is presented beginning with Snell’s Law. The analogy between FTIR and quantum tunneling in one dimension is discussed. A quantitative and inexpensive method of demonstrating FTIR based on the attenuation of a microwave through an air gap between two wax prisms is described and a quantitative comparison of the theory with experiment is made. An extension of FTIR using microwave, as it is used in an Evanescent Wave Atomic Force Microscope (EW-AFM), is looked into and evaluated.
Frustrated total internal reflection is considered as the classical analog of quantum-mechanical tunneling. Here the tunneling time in frustrated total internal reflection is discussed. It is shown that the phase time allows for vanishing and negative barrier traversal times. The tunneling time is shown to be dominated by a time scale based on the Goos-H\"anchen shift. The role of further nonspecular deformations of the transmitted beam is addressed. The resulting tunneling times are compared with experimental data.
We are interested in a coherent atom mirror (specular atomic reflections in vacuum).A resonant dielectric waveguide structure is placed upon the prism so that a large energy is confined into the waveguide which is placed between two mediums of low index medium.The incident laser beam is resonantly coupled to a waveguide mode, through the gap, by frustrated total internal reflection.We obtain a large amplitude evanescent wave in the vacuum above the waveguide.We study the influence of the thickness of the gap and the losses inside the waveguide.