The Zenneck wave, Zenneck surface wave or Sommerfeld-Zenneck surface wave is a longitudinal, inhomogeneous or non-uniform electromagnetic

plane wave In physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of ...

incident at the complex Brewster's angle onto a planar or spherical boundary interface between two homogeneous media having different dielectric constants.Corum, K.L. and J.F. Corum, “Bell Labs and the ‘Crucial’ 1936 Seneca Lake Experiment.” Republished as: The Zenneck wave propagates parallel to the interface and decays exponentially vertical to it, a property known as

evanescence Evanescence is an American Rock music, rock band founded in 1994 by singer and keyboardist Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody in Little Rock, Arkansas. After releasing independent extended play, EPs and a Origin (Evanescence demo album), demo ...

. It exists under the condition that the

permittivity In electromagnetism, the absolute permittivity, often simply called permittivity and denoted by the Greek letter (epsilon), is a measure of the electric polarizability of a dielectric material. A material with high permittivity polarizes more ...

of one of the materials forming the interface is negative, while the other one is positive, as for example the interface between air and a lossy conducting medium such as the terrestrial transmission line, below the plasma frequency. Arising from original analysis by

Arnold Sommerfeld Arnold Johannes Wilhelm Sommerfeld (; 5 December 1868 – 26 April 1951) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist who pioneered developments in Atomic physics, atomic and Quantum mechanics, quantum physics, and also educated and ...

and

Jonathan Zenneck Jonathan Adolf Wilhelm Zenneck (; ; 15 April 1871 – 8 April 1959) was a German physicist and electrical engineer. Zenneck improved the cathode-ray tube by adding a second deflection structure at right angles to the first, which allowed two-di ...

of the problem of wave propagation over a lossy earth, it exists as an exact solution to

Maxwell's equations Maxwell's equations, or Maxwell–Heaviside equations, are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, Electrical network, electr ...

. Recently in 2020, it was demonstrated by Oruganti et al., that it was possible to excite Zenneck wave type waves on flat metal-air interfaces and transmit power across metal obstacles.S. K. Oruganti, A. Khosla and T. G. Thundat, "Wireless Power-Data Transmission for Industrial Internet of Things: Simulations and Experiments," in IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 187965-187974, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3030658 .

References

Electromagnetism Surface waves {{electromagnetism-stub

See also

References