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Evanescent wave coupling

In optics, evanescent wave coupling is a process by which electromagnetic waves are transmitted from one medium to another by means of the evanescent, exponentially decaying electromagnetic field.

Coupling is usually accomplished by placing two or more electromagnetic elements such as optical waveguides close together so that the evanescent field generated by one element does not decay much before it reaches the other element. With waveguides, if the receiving waveguide can support modes of the appropriate frequency, the evanescent field gives rise to propagating wave modes, thereby connecting (or coupling) the wave from one waveguide to the next.

Evanescent wave coupling is fundamentally identical to near field interaction in electromagnetic field theory. Depending on the impedance of the radiating source element, the evanescent wave is either predominantly electric (capacitive) or magnetic (inductive), unlike in the far field where these components of the wave eventually reach the ratio of the impedance of free space and the wave propagates radiatively. The evanescent wave coupling takes place in the non-radiative field near each medium and as such is always associated with matter, i.e. with the induced currents and charges within a partially reflecting surface. This coupling is directly analogous to the coupling between the primary and secondary coils of a transformer, or between the two plates of a capacitor. Mathematically, the process is the same as that of quantum tunneling, except with electromagnetic waves instead of quantum-mechanical wavefunctions.
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