Abstract: Total internal reflection is the phenomenon which light is reflected totally on the surface when light is incident from a dense medium to a thin medium at an angle greater than critical angle. In total internal reflection, evanescent waves are generated on the side of the thin medium. Evanescent wave is a surface wave that propagates along the surface of media and its amplitude decreases exponentially with the increase of penetration depth. When the medium of the third layer with a higher refractive index than the second layer gets close to the boundary between the first and the second layer, the medium will interact with evanescent waves in the second layer, resulting in partial light reflected by total internal reflection at the interface of the first and second layer penetrating into the third layer medium, and this phenomenon is called frustrated total internal reflection. In recent years, frustrated total internal reflection has been applied in many fields and has attracted extensive attention. In this paper, firstly evanescent wave and frustrated total internal reflection and theories of them are introduced briefly, and the relationship between transmittance and width of the thin medium, refractive index of medium and incident angle are simulated by MATLAB. Secondly, two experimental schemes to verify the frustrated total internal reflection and some applications depending on in several fields are shown.

Key words: total internal reflection, evanescent wave, frustrated total internal reflection