Total Internal Reflection Accounts for the Bright Color of the Saharan Silver Ant
Fig 4
Influence of corrugations on the upper faces of the hairs on light reflection.
(a) Schematic view of the corrugated chitin profile for light entering (in) and exiting (out) a hair. (b) Comparison of the specular reflectance between a flat chitin surface and a chitin surface corrugated by a sinusoidal profile, at normal incidence (see text). Corrugations significantly attenuate the reflection on both entry (in) and exit (out) of the light. This results in a global prism reflection ranging from 95% (800 nm) to 98% (350 nm) for incidence angles producing a total internal reflection. 64 monochromatic plane waves were used to reach the convergence of the transfer-matrix calculation.