A method for treatment of the transverse or longitudinal shifts of multiply internally reflected light beams is developed in terms of eigenfunctions for the reflection processes. Localized wave packets composed of plane-wave eigenfunctions are used to discuss the detailed structure of the shifted intensity distributions for several experimental conditions. With this approach image widths and over-all shifts, as well as splittings between images, can be calculated. The predictions are compared with the experimental results of Imbert and are found to agree with the observed transverse splitting between left and right circularly polarized light beams. Since the theory presented here disagrees with that proposed by Imbert in several respects, experiments are suggested which would distinguish between alternative theories.

• Received 13 July 1972

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.7.2383