Asymptotic Solution for Skin Heating by an Electromagnetic Beam at an Incident Angle

TL;DR

This paper derives an asymptotic solution for skin heating caused by millimeter-wave electromagnetic beams at arbitrary incident angles, revealing how angle affects temperature distribution and activation of thermal nociceptors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel asymptotic analysis that accounts for arbitrary incident angles, providing scaling laws for skin temperature and nociceptor activation.

Findings

Derived a leading-term asymptotic solution for temperature distribution.

Established scaling laws for skin and surface temperatures.

Applicable to arbitrary incident angles without small-angle assumptions.

Abstract

We investigate the temperature evolution in the three-dimensional skin tissue exposed to a millimeter-wave electromagnetic beam that is not necessarily perpendicular to the skin surface. This study examines the effect of the beam's incident angle. The incident angle influences the thermal heating in two aspects: (i) the beam spot projected onto the skin is elongated compared to the intrinsic beam spot in a perpendicular cross section, resulting in a lower power per skin area; and (ii) within the tissue, the beam propagates at the refracted angle relative to the depth direction. At millimeter-wavelength frequencies, the characteristic penetration depth is sub-millimeter, whereas the lateral extent of the beam spans at least several centimeters in applications. We explore the small ratio of the penetration depth to the lateral length scale in a non-dimensional formulation and derive a leading-term asymptotic solution for the temperature distribution. This analysis does not rely on a small incident angle and is therefore applicable to arbitrary angles of incidence. Based on the asymptotic solution, we establish scaling laws for the three-dimensional skin temperature, the skin surface temperature, and the skin volume in which thermal nociceptors are activated.