Diffraction of high-frequency waves by the edge of a perfectly conducting sheet located on a cylindrical dielectric interface (Q1064181)

An important class of electromagnetic structures involves metallic sheets on the surface of a curved dielectric interface. At high frequencies, the behavior of such structures can be analyzed by the geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD) provided that the various wave and ray species excited by a single edge are known. This problem is addressed here by determining the line source Green's function for a thin perfectly conducting half plane wrapped around a dielectric cylinder in an infinitely extended (nonperiodic) angular space. The formally exact solution is evaluated asymptotically to yield the GTD field in various ray-optical domains, with emphasis on those wave and ray species (creeping waves, whispering gallery modes, edge scattered fields, etc.) attributed to the presence of the edge. When the dielectric contrast is reduced to zero, all expressions are found to agree with those known for a curved sheet in a homogeneous medium.