DIFFRACTION BY A DIELECTRIC HALF-PLANE.

The problem of diffraction of a plane electromagnetic wave by a dielectric half-plane is studied using a set of recently developed approximate boundary conditions and the Wiener-Hopf technique. It is observed from the present solution of the problem that reflected waves cease to exist if the angle of incidence takes up the value tan-**1 (1/n) where n represents the refractive index of the material of the half-plane under consideration. An expression for the diffracted far field is obtained by using a modification of the saddle point method, and numerical values of the diffraction coefficients are presented in the form of a table for a special value of the refractive index n and for different values of the kh, h representing the (small) thickness of the half-plane and k the wavenumber.