Abstract
The negative and positive Goos-Hänchen (GH) shifts in reflected light are revisited for a partial coherent light incident on a cavity. A three-level dilute gaseous atomic medium, which follows two-photon Raman transitions, is considered in a cavity. The anomalous (negative group index) and normal (positive group index) dispersions of the intracavity medium lead to negative and positive GH shifts, respectively. The effects of beam width, spatial coherence, and mode index of partial coherent light fields are studied on the negative and positive GH shifts. It is observed that the amplitude of negative and positive GH shifts are relatively large for a small range of beam width and for a small value of spatial coherence of partial coherent light beams. The amplitude of GH shifts becomes small for large beam width and spatial coherence of incident light. Further, the distortion in the reflected light field increases when the amplitude of the GH shifts increases and vice versa. © 2015 American Physical Society.