Conical diffraction of a plane wave by an inclined parallel-plate grating

摘要

We present a rigorous differential method describing the conical diffraction of an electromagnetic plane wave by an inclined parallel-plate grating. Above and below the grating, the fields are written with the use of Rayleigh's expansion. Inside the grating, Maxwell's equations are used in covariant form, written in a nonor-thogonal coordinate system. Therefore the expression of boundary conditions on the perfectly conducting walls as well as on the planes delimiting the grating becomes simplified. In the classical diffraction case the numerical results compared successfully with those obtained with a Wiener-Hopf method [IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. 36, 1424 (1988)]. # 1997 Optical Society of America [S0740-3232(97)00403-1]