Deriving the transmission and reflection coefficients of an optically active medium without using boundary conditions

A new wave vector space method that can solve wave propagation problems in bounded media withut the use of boundary conditions is applied to a half space of an optically active medium to obtain the transmission and reflection coefficients for oblique incidence. The calculation is aided by a fundamental constitutive derivation that produces the mechanisms, the interchange symmetry, and the frequency and wave vector dispersion for both the bulk and surface interactions. It is also aided by a recent fundamental derivation of the energy propagation vector. This derivation resolves a number of long-standing controversies concerning this problem: it shows that no surface wave need be generated as has been proposed and its solution shows that neither Htang nor Dₙₒᵣₘ are continuous at the surface.