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Light transport in chiral and magnetochiral random media
Felipe A Pinheiro1, Bart A van Tiggelen
1Laboratoire de Physique et Modélisation des Milieux Condensés, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université Joseph Fourier, B.P. 166, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 09, France. Felipe.Pinheiro@polycnrs-gre.fr
Abstract:
We present a microscopic approach to study electromagnetic wave propagation in media with broken mirror symmetry. We introduce and calculate the transport mean free path l*C associated with the residual polarization of diffuse light in chiral systems. In chiral media subject to an external magnetic field B, all symmetry requirements exist to create a macroscopic "super" light current in the direction of B that persists even in the absence of a spatial photon density gradient. However, we show that such a current is identically zero in our model. We finally show the existence of a linear magnetotransmission in magnetochiral media.