Target Signatures for Anisotropic Screens in Electromagnetic Scattering

Abstract: Anisotropic thin sheets of materials possess intriguing properties because of their ability to modify the phase, amplitude and polarization of incident waves. Such sheets are usually modeled by imposing transmission conditions of resistive or conductive type on a surface called a screen. We start by analyzing this model, and show that the standard passivity conditions can be slightly strengthened to provide conditions under which the forward scattering problem has a unique solution. We then turn to the inverse problem and suggest a target signature for monitoring such films. The target signature is based on a modified far field equation obtained by subtracting an artificial far field operator for scattering by a closed surface containing the thin sheet and parametrized by an artificial impedance. We show that this impedance gives rise to an interior eigenvalue problem, and these eigenvalues can be determined from the far field pattern, so functioning as target signatures. We prove uniqueness for the inverse problem, and give preliminary numerical examples illustrating our theory.