A Note on “Variation in the Surface-Charge Density of an Excitable Nerve Membrane Exposed to Optical Radiationâ€

An error depicting the dimensional inconsistency in the expression for surface density of an excitable nerve membrane obtained by Agrawal et al. in the above paper, is indicated. This error arises mainly due to the incorrect definition and evaluation of surface-charge density adopted in the paper. Further, the analysis presented completely ignores the beam-wave parameters of the optical radiation. Hence, necessary corrections to the expression for surface-charge density and modifications to the reflection coefficient at the membrane surface, by taking into account the beam-wave characteristics, are presented here. Copyright © 1978 by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.