Unidirectional wave propagation in media with complex principal axes
Horsley, SAR
Date: 22 February 2018
Journal
Physical Review A
Publisher
American Physical Society
Publisher DOI
Abstract
In an anisotropic medium, the refractive index depends on the direction of propagation. Zero index in a fixed direction implies a stretching of the wave to uniformity along that axis, reducing the effective number of dimensions by 1. Here we investigate two-dimensional gyrotropic media where the refractive index is 0 in a complex valued ...
In an anisotropic medium, the refractive index depends on the direction of propagation. Zero index in a fixed direction implies a stretching of the wave to uniformity along that axis, reducing the effective number of dimensions by 1. Here we investigate two-dimensional gyrotropic media where the refractive index is 0 in a complex valued direction, finding that the wave becomes an analytic function of a single complex variable z. For simply connected media this analyticity implies unidirectional propagation of electromagnetic waves, similar to the edge states that occur in photonic “topological insulators.” For a medium containing holes the propagation is no longer unidirectional. We illustrate the sensitivity of the field to the topology of the space using an exactly solvable example. To conclude we provide a generalization of transformation optics where a complex coordinate transformation can be used to relate ordinary anisotropic media to the recently highlighted gyrotropic ones supporting one-way edge states.
Physics and Astronomy
Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy
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