Propagation in bianisotropic media-reflection and transmission

A systematic analysis for solving the wave propagation problem in a general bianisotropic, stratified medium is presented. The method utilises the concept of propagators, and the representation of these operators is simplified by introducing the Cayley-Hamilton theorem. The propagators propagate the total tangential electric and magnetic fields in the slab and only outside the slab do the up- and down-going parts of the fields need to be identified. This procedure makes the physical interpretation of the theory intuitive. The reflection and the transmission dyadics for a general bianisotropic medium with an isotropic (vacuum) half-space on both sides of the slab are presented in a co-ordinate-independent dyadic notation, as well as the reflection dyadic for a bianisotropic slab with perfectly electric backing (PEC). In the latter case the current on the metal backing is also given. Some numerical computations that illustrate the algorithm are presented