Goos–Hänchen Lateral Displacements and Angular Deviations: When These Optical Effects Offset Each Other

For optical beams transmitted by a right-angle prism, the Goos–Hänchen shift can never be seen as a pure effect. Indeed, the lateral displacement, caused by the total internal reflection, will always be accompanied by angular deviations generated by the transmission through the incoming and outgoing interfaces. This combined effect can be analyzed by using the Taylor expansion of the Fresnel coefficients. The analytic expression found for the transmitted beam allows us to determine the beam parameters, the incidence angles, and the axial distance for which lateral displacements are compensated by angular deviations. Proposals to optimize experimental implementations are also briefly discussed.