Why does the free end refraction occur after Brewster's angle in TM?

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SUMMARY

The discussion centers on the phenomenon of free end reflection occurring after the Brewster angle in transverse magnetic (TM) waves when transitioning from a vacuum to a denser medium like glass. It is established that at angles greater than the Brewster angle, the reflected wave experiences a 180-degree phase shift, leading to potential cancellation between incident and reflected waves. The reflection coefficient can be expressed as a combination of free end and fixed end reflection terms, with the former dominating at angles exceeding the Brewster angle, resulting in a positive overall reflection value.

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jojoe
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Thanks for reading my question, and i’m really sorry about my poor english.

What i am wondering about is
why does the free end occur after the incidence angle overcome the Brewster angle in TM wave? (The ray incident from vacuum to glass(dense medium))

i tried to interpret this phenomenon with dipole oscillation of medium and the velocity difference of light in different medium(with more detail, vacuum to dense medium), but those trial didn’t make any effective conclusions.

Could someone help me about understanding this with macro or microscale aspect?
 
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Sorry Jojoe, can you try to find another word for free end as I cannot understand it.
At angles greater than the Brewster Angle, the reflected wave undergoes a 180 deg phase shift. At angles less than the Brewster Angle it does not. This phase shift at large angles of incidence can result in cancellation between incident and reflected waves.
 
tech99 said:
Sorry Jojoe, can you try to find another word for free end as I cannot understand it.
At angles greater than the Brewster Angle, the reflected wave undergoes a 180 deg phase shift. At angles less than the Brewster Angle it does not. This phase shift at large angles of incidence can result in cancellation between incident and reflected waves.
I think free end reflection might be proper representation, that the reflected light has the same phase with incident light. I thought about some idea that the reflection coefficient can be represented with the summation of free end reflection term(which has positive sign with cosine) and fixed end reflection term(which has negative sign of sine in sqrt). As the angle gets greater than Brewster angle, the free end reflection term is dominant, so the whole reflection terms gets positive value, which designates free end reflection of TM wave. Will it be related with the cancellation between the incident and reflected waves?
 

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Thank you, I understand now. I think you are correct. Cancellation occurs if the detector sees both the incident beam of light and the reflected beam of light for the case when angle of incidence is greater than the Brerwster Angle.
 

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