Theoretical study of the lateral displacement of random fields at interfaces.

The lateral displacement of a totally reflected light beam from the position expected by geometrical optics has been known for some time. The effect, known as the Goos-Hänchen shift, may be understood in terms of the phase changes acquired upon reflection at the interface by the plane wave components of the angular spectrum representation of the incident field. In this work, we study the shifts that occur in the reflection of random fields from flat dielectric interfaces.