Surface‐wave reflection and refraction at an impedance discontinuity

The general problem of surface‐wave reflection and refraction at an impedance discontinuity, for both transverse‐magnetic and transverse‐electric polarizations, oblique incidence and lossy surfaces, is solved exactly by the Wiener–Hopf technique. General formulas are obtained for the reflected surface wave, the transmitted surface wave, and the radiation at the discontinuity. The solution is shown to become unphysical for certain ranges of the problem parameters. The source of the unphysicality is the approximate nature of the impedance formulation of the surface‐wave scattering problem.