Reply to Comment on ‘No circular birefringence exists in a chiral medium: an analysis of single-mode refraction’

Based on their finding that the circularly polarized Beltrami fields are solutions to their eigenvalue equation (7), the authors of preceding Comment claim that the linearly polarized basis is inapplicable to light waves in an isotropic chiral medium. We show that the analysis is flawed. The reason...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New journal of physics 2024-12, Vol.26 (12), p.128002
Main Authors: Hu, Zhi-Juan, Li, Chun-Fang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Birefringence
Circular polarization
Codes
Eigenvalues
Electric fields
isotropic chiral media
Linear polarization
Magnetic fields
nonexistence of circular birefringence
optical rotation
Physics
polarization basis
polarization of light
Propagation
propagation velocity
Velocity
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Summary:Based on their finding that the circularly polarized Beltrami fields are solutions to their eigenvalue equation (7), the authors of preceding Comment claim that the linearly polarized basis is inapplicable to light waves in an isotropic chiral medium. We show that the analysis is flawed. The reason is twofold. Firstly, we prove that the Beltrami fields are, by definition, not a polarization basis for both the electric and magnetic fields of light waves in the chiral medium. Secondly, we demonstrate that linearly polarized and circularly polarized waves in the chiral medium are on the same footing if the electric and magnetic fields, rather than the Beltrami fields, are considered.
ISSN:1367-2630
DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/ad9ac6