Optical Chirality in Dispersive and Lossy Media

Several dynamical properties of electromagnetic waves such as energy, momentum, angular momentum, and optical helicity have been recently reexamined in dispersive and lossless media. Here, we address an alternative derivation for the optical chirality, extending it so as to include dissipative effec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2018-07, Vol.121 (4), p.043901, Article 043901
Main Authors: Vázquez-Lozano, J Enrique, Martínez, Alejandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Angular momentum
Chirality
Electromagnetic fields
Electromagnetic radiation
Helicity
Lossless materials
Lossy media
Metamaterials
Optical properties
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Several dynamical properties of electromagnetic waves such as energy, momentum, angular momentum, and optical helicity have been recently reexamined in dispersive and lossless media. Here, we address an alternative derivation for the optical chirality, extending it so as to include dissipative effects as well. To this end, we first elaborate on the most complete form of the conservation law for the optical chirality, without any restrictions on the nature of the medium. As a result we find a general expression for the optical chirality density both in lossless and lossy dispersive media. Our definition is perfectly consistent with that originally introduced for electromagnetic fields in free space, and is applicable to any material system, including dielectrics, plasmonic nanostructures, and left-handed metamaterials.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.121.043901