The conditions for the preservation of duality symmetry in a linear medium

Abstract

Electric magnetic duality symmetry is well understood in vacuum. For light propagating through a medium this symmetry is typically broken. We investigate under what conditions duality transformation is preserved in a linear medium and employ these conditions to generalise the definition of optical helicity to a general linear medium. We will discuss some unique properties duality symmetric media possess, provided they exist and reformulate Maxwell's equation in such a way that they explicitly show the decoupling of opposite helicities. The feasibility of constructing a duality symmetric medium is discussed.

10 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (6)

• Characterizing optical chirality
• Magnetoelectric Effects in Local Light-Matter Interactions
• Superconducting Metamaterials
• Chirality and angular momentum in optical radiation
• Tunability of Superconducting Metamaterials
• Spacetime algebra as a powerful tool for electromagnetism

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Electromagnetic helicity in complex media
• Electromagnetic-dual metasurfaces for topological states along a one-dimensional interface
• Angular momenta, helicity, and other properties of dielectric-fiber and metallic-wire modes
• Superpositions of up to six plane waves without electric-field interference
• On the conservation of helicity in a chiral medium
• Quantised helicity in optical media