Reflection and Refraction of the Laser Light Pulse at the Vacuum-Medium Interface

By generalizing the well known results for reflection and refraction of plane waves at the vacuum-medium interface to Gaussian light beams, we obtain analytic formulas for reflection and refraction of the TM and TE laser light pulses. This enables us to give a possible explanation why no reflection was observed in light pulse photographs in some vicinity of the air-resin interface, given in L. Gao, J. Liang, C. Li, and L. V. Wang, Nature 516 (2014) 74-77. We suggest how to modify the experimental setup so as to observe the reflected pulse.