Fermat's principle with complex refractive indices and local light-ray rotation

Abstract

We describe local light-ray rotation in terms of complex refractive indices. We show that Fermat's principle holds, and we derive an extended Snell's law. The change in the angle of a light ray with respect to the normal to a refractive-index interface is described by the modulus of the refractive-index ratio, the rotation around the interface normal is described by the argument of the refractive-index ratio.

3 pages, 2 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Metamaterials for light rays: ray optics without wave-optical analog in the ray-optics limit

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