A new treatment of the well-known Sommerfeld solution of the problem of plane-wave diffraction from a perfectly conducting half-plane is reported. We show, in both theory and experiment, that the diffraction field (E-polarization) can be represented as a superposition of real physically existing waves, in contrast to geometrical and boundary waves postulated in Sommerfeld's representation. Our representation includes two pairs of wave components: one pair propagates along the direction of the incident wave, and the other in a mirror-reflected direction. Each wave pair consists of a plane-wave component with an amplitude half that of the incident wave and a nearly plane-wave component with an infinitely extended edge dislocation. On the basis of the proposed interpretation, all features of the half-plane diffraction are explained.

The exact solution is found for plane wave diffraction by an arbitrary phase step. The analysis is performed by using the Huygens-Fresnel principle and the superposition integral, where every secondary wave was identified with the surface element field of the actual electromagnetic wave. The dependence of the total field structure on the height of the phase step is analyzed. The formation algorithm is demonstrated for the primary wave component of the edge diffraction, which has a singular nature and determines nearly all physical properties of this phenomenon.

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UDC 535.2:621Using a rigorous theory of diffraction, we explain the origin and analyze the structure of a wideangle illuminated area observed when a limited beam is diffracted by the sharp edge of an opaque screen. It is shown that the formed plume has the structure of a cylindrical wave traveling from the screen edge and its amplitude is proportional to the beam amplitude at this edge. The observed structure is Young's boundary wave produced by diffraction of the limited beam.

No abstract