A generic approach to boundary reflection in periodic media

Waves in periodic media, whose propagation is governed by nearest neighbour interaction, are investigated. The reflection and transmission coefficients are derived for a plane wave incident from medium 1 upon medium 2, without invoking common approximations. The derivation is valid for a class of waves including magneto- and electro-inductive waves, waves on short loaded dipoles, nanoparticles, coupled waveguides and acoustic waves in monatomic media. For this last case hitherto unknown microscopic reflection and transmission coefficients are derived and shown to reduce in the continuous limit to the well-known expressions in terms of acoustic impedances. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006