Volume 19: Pages 502-506, 2006

Electromagnetic Pulse Reflection on P and T Mirrors

P. Hillion ¹

¹Institut Henri Poincaré, 86 Bis Route de Croissy, Le Vésinet, 78110 France

Time reversal is an operation that transforms divergent waves into convergent waves with practical applications in acoustics and electromagnetism. So what is the behavior of time‐reversed electromagnetic fields? To investigate this question we suppose the existence of T mirrors, performing exactly the time inversion T : t                           − t, on which impinges a pulse of finite duration, launched at t = 0, from a height h above the mirror located in the z = 0 plane. We prove that the T‐reflected waves generate a real source at height h, corroborating the interest of time reversal. For the sake of comparison the same job is done with P mirrors performing exactly the space inversion P : x   −x, giving a virtual image of the incident pulse.

Keywords: electromagnetic waves, TM, TE fields, Maxwell's equations, time‐reversal mirrors, reflected pulses, Wells time machine

Received: September 23, 2004; Published Online: December 15, 2008