Removing grazing incidence reflection with half-bound states and non-Hermitian systems

Abstract

Grazing incidence waves incident onto a surface will almost always be completely reflected. Here, we focus on removing reflection at grazing incidence, adopting the factorisation method from quantum mechanics and applying it to the Helmholtz equation that governs a single electromagnetic polarisation. We show that there are two approaches, the first is to require real dielectric profiles that support a half-bound state at grazing incidence. The second is to allow non-Hermitian dielectric profiles that exhibit PT symmetry, supporting waves with constant intensity throughout the profile.