Thin-Film Enhanced Goos-Hänchen Shift in Total Internal Reflection

It is reported that the Goos-Hänchen (GH) shift of both TE and TM light beams totally reflected from a dielectric interface can be greatly enhanced by a dielectric thin film without changing the property of total internal reflection. Numerical simulations confirm the theoretical analysis and show that the enhanced GH shift can be as large as the width of the beam for beam's width up to 820 times of the wavelength. This may stimulate investigations in other areas of physics and may lead to interesting applications in optical devices. The enhancement of the GH shift is accompanied by the enhancement of the intensity of the decaying field in the optically thin medium and of the propagating field inside the film.