Beyond Snel's law: Refraction of a nano-beam of light

The refraction of a localized narrow beam is significantly different from that of a plane wave. As the beam width decreases to be in the order of the wavelength, the refraction behavior deviates noticeably from Snel's law, and when the width of a light beam is smaller than about one fifth of the wavelength of the incident light, finite-difference time-domain simulations demonstrate that refraction becomes negligible. That is, the narrow light beam retains its propagation direction even after entering another medium at an oblique angle. The result reveals novel features of nano-beams and may have applications in precise biomedical measurement or micro optical device.