Non-Abelian evolution of electromagnetic waves in a weakly anisotropic inhomogeneous medium

Abstract

A theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in a weakly anisotropic smoothly inhomogeneous medium is developed, based on the quantum-mechanical diagonalization procedure applied to Maxwell equations. The equations of motion for the translational (ray) and intrinsic (polarization) degrees of freedom are derived ab initio. The ray equations take into account the optical Magnus effect (spin Hall effect of photons) as well as trajectory variations owing to the medium anisotropy. Polarization evolution is described by the precession equation for the Stokes vector. In generic case, the evolution of waves turns out to be non-Abelian: it is accompanied by mutual conversion of the normal modes and periodic oscillations of the ray trajectories analogous to electron zitterbewegung. The general theory is applied to examples of wave evolution in media with circular and linear birefringence.

18 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. A

References in corpus (19)

• Hall Effect of Light
• Conservation of Angular Momentum, Transverse Shift, and Spin Hall Effect in Reflection and Refraction of Electromagnetic Wave Packet
• Geometrical Optics of Beams with Vortices: Berry Phase and Orbital Angular Momentum Hall Effect
• Topological spin transport of photons: the optical Magnus Effect and Berry Phase
• Unified description of the Zitterbewegung for spintronic, graphene and superconducting systems
• Spin transverse force on spin current in an electric field
• Spin Hall effect and Berry phase of spinning particles
• A semiclassical approach to the Dirac equation
• Modified geometrical optics of a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium: the anisotropy, Berry phase, and the optical Magnus effect
• Coherent wave-packet evolution in coupled bands
• Fermat Principle for spinning light
• Zitterbewegung of electrons and holes in III-V semiconductor quantum wells
• Topological spin transport of relativistic electron
• Geometrical Spinoptics and the Optical Hall Effect
• Polarization Transport of Transverse Acoustic Waves: Berry Phase and Spin Hall Effect of Phonons
• Semiclassical limit of the Dirac equation and spin precession
• Topological spin transport of photons: "magnetic monopole" gauge field in Maxwell equations and polarization splitting of rays in periodically inhomogeneous media
• Spin Hall effect and zitterbewegung in an electron waveguide
• Charge and spin density modulations in semiconductor quantum wires

Cited by in corpus (33)

• Goos-Hänchen and Imbert-Fedorov beam shifts: An overview
• Geometrodynamics of Spinning Light
• Coriolis Effect in Optics: Unified Geometric Phase and Spin-Hall Effect
• Semiclassical Dynamics of Electron Wave Packet States with Phase Vortices
• Angular Momenta and Spin-Orbit Interaction of Nonparaxial Light in Free Space
• Geometrodynamics of polarized light: Berry phase and spin Hall effect in a gradient-index medium
• Geometric phases in 2D and 3D polarized fields: geometrical, dynamical, and topological aspects
• Non-Abelian gauge field optics
• Dualities and non-Abelian mechanics
• Singular polarimetry: Evolution of polarization singularities in electromagnetic waves propagating through a weakly anisotropic medium
• Spinoptics in a stationary spacetime
• Artificial non-Abelian lattice gauge fields for photons in the synthetic frequency dimension
• Stokes-vector evolution in a weakly anisotropic inhomogeneous medium
• First-principle variational formulation of polarization effects in geometrical optics
• Classical Field Approach to Quantum Weak Measurements
• Zitterbewegung of exciton-polaritons
• Extending geometrical optics: A Lagrangian theory for vector waves
• Electromagnetic confinement via spin-orbit interaction in anisotropic dielectrics
• Lagrangian geometrical optics of nonadiabatic vector waves and spin particles
• Interplay between diffraction and the Pancharatnam-Berry phase in inhomogeneously twisted anisotropic media
• Finsler Spinoptics
• Metaplectic geometrical optics for modeling caustics in uniform and nonuniform media
• Unified Dynamics of Electrons and Photons via Zitterbewegung and Spin-Orbit Interaction
• Spin-orbit interactions in optically active materials
• Waveguiding driven by the Pancharatnam-Berry phase
• The propagation of a polarized Gaussian beam in a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium
• Chiral magnetic effect of light
• Paraxial propagation in amorphous optical media with screw dislocation
• Testing the Wave-Particle Duality of Gravitational Wave Using the Spin-Orbital-Hall Effect of Structured Light
• Induced Berry Connection and Photonic Spin Hall Effect in Optical Dirac Theory
• Spin selective scattering modes in random anisotropy optical medium
• Paraxial propagation in disclinated amorphous media
• The spin-orbit interaction and the spin-spin interaction of photons in an inhomogeneous medium