Radiative Transfer in a Plane Stratified Dielectric

Abstract

A model is developed for calculating radiative transfer in a stratified dielectric. It is the purpose of this document to develop a framework for consideration of dielectric and thermal variations in one dimension. This model is used to show that the reflectivity of a stratified dielectric is primarily determined by gradients in the real part of the refractive index over distances on the order of 1/10 wavelength in the medium.