Abstract

The conventional algorithm for obtaining the p-ray reflectance (R) of a metal in an attenuated total-reflection (ATR) experiment is to normalize the p-ray reflecting power of the metal (I_p) with its s-ray reflecting power (I_s). We found that for these ATR experiments in Kretschmann’s configuration, two conditions will make I_s less than I_p. In the first condition the film itself is absorptive; in the second the film is weakly absorptive but has thin thickness. When I_s < I_p, the conventional algorithm is not applicable anymore; otherwise, the measured reflectance will be greater than one. With a modified focused-beam ATR experiment, we demonstrated that the above hindrance can be overcome by taking the intensity distribution of the incident p ray as the normalizing signal. The reflectance of the bare prism at incident angles greater than the critical angle is also suggested to be taken as a proper normalization factor.

© 1993 Optical Society of America

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