EM M00 1
From QED
Suppose we have the plane wave in the conductor:

We take Maxwell's equations:


where we used the constituitive relations .
Taking the curl of the first equation and using our
vector relation, we get the wave equation:

So:

Or:

Since :

So:

We recognize the skin depth:

Yielding:

We know the incoming ki = ω / c. We must also have continuity across the boundary:
So that:

Plugging in:

Since we have a good conductor, this is , and so we can write:

So using we can expand:

And plugging in for θt:

So:

Where we discarded the higher order term in the small value. And so, using ω = ν / 2π:

We simply need to expand the other fraction:

Plugging in:

Which we can rewrite as:

Which we can plug in for the absorption coefficient:

Where we keep the higher order term since secθi is unbounded. This gives us:

As , the polarization will be entirely parallel to the
plane of emission. This is because the wave is caused
by the motion of the electrons in the conductor, which
cannot move out of the plane, and since EM radiation is
transverse, the waves must be caused only by electron
motion parallel to this plane.
This page was recovered in October 2009 from the Plasmagicians page on Prelim_M00_EM1 dated 22:31, 3 January 2006.