Scattering of electromagnetic waves by rough dielectric surfaces

Abstract

We present a treatment of the scattering of electromagnetic waves at rough dielectric surfaces using both the Rayleigh hypothesis and the extinction theorem. An explicit expression relating s- and p-polarized components of the field in the dielectric with the incident field is given. A Dyson equation is then derived for the field and an exact iterative series solution is given for both transmitted and reflected fields. In order to evaluate quantitatively the accuracy of this method, scattering by a sinusoidal grating is examined in detail; the results are in agreement with rigorous approaches previously reported.