Optical metrics and birefringence of anisotropic media

Abstract

The material tensor of linear response in electrodynamics is constructed out of products of two symmetric second rank tensor fields which in the approximation of geometrical optics and for uniaxial symmetry reduce to "optical" metrics, describing the phenomenon of birefringence. This representation is interpreted in the context of an underlying internal geometrical structure according to which the symmetric tensor fields are vectorial elements of an associated two-dimensional space.

24 pages, accepted for publication in GRG

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Non-minimal Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theory: Associated, color and color-acoustic metrics for the Wu-Yang monopole model
• Einstein-aether theory with a Maxwell field: General formalism
• The Covariant Description of Electromagnetically Polarizable Media
• Effective metrics and a fully covariant description of constitutive tensors in electrodynamics
• Covariant electrodynamics in linear media: Optical metric
• Effective metrics in the non-minimal Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theory
• Non-minimal Einstein-Maxwell theory: the Fresnel equation and the Petrov classification of a trace-free susceptibility tensor
• Non-minimal pp-wave Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs model: color cross-effects induced by curvature
• Relativistic Lagrangian model of a nematic liquid crystal interacting with an electromagnetic field
• Light propagation with non-minimal couplings in a two-component cosmic dark fluid with an Archimedean-type force and unlighted cosmological epochs
• Boyer-Lindquist space-times and beyond: Meta-material analogues
• Birefringence induced by pp-wave modes in an electromagnetically active dynamic aether
• Electromagnetic analogue space-times, analytically and algebraically
• Ray optics in the field of non-minimal Dirac monopole
• Extension of the Einstein-Dirac-axion-aether theory based on an effective metric with a spinor kernel