THE PHYSICAL THEORY OF SLOPE DIFFRACTION

The physical theory of diffraction (PTD) has been expanded for the cas e of slope diffraction, when an incident wave is zero but its derivati ve is not zero in the direction of a perfectly conducting scattering e dge. High frequency asymptotics are found both for elementary edge wav es and for the total edge waves scattered by arbitrary curved edges. G reat attention is given to fields created by the nonuniform (diffracti on) component of edge currents. These fields are usually called PTD co rrections to the Physical Optics approach. These corrections are found for diffraction fields in ray regions and in diffraction regions such as the vicinities of shadow boundaries, smooth caustics, and foci.