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Selective Induced Magnetic Dichroism and Birefringence in a Left-Handed Medium

Haris Waleed Abbasi, Yasir Saeed, Nadia Boutabba, Hazrat Ali

Published Jul 22, 2025• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Birefringence and dichroism in atomic systems are active areas of research. Circular dichroism is typically observed in chiral atoms, molecules (such as DNA), and optically asymmetric materials. These phenomena enable polarization-based selectivity and high-precision measurements with applications in optical systems, biomedical diagnostics, and advanced photonics.Meanwhile, negative refractive index materials offer exotic applications in optics and photonics, including super-resolution imaging, invisibility cloaking, and sub-wavelength imaging. Here, we identify a novel route to achieving birefringence and dichroism in a left-handed system for the first time.We investigate the optical activity of an atomic left-handed medium, analyzing the interaction of left- and right-circularly polarized light with different atomic states while incorporating local field corrections. Notably, our results demonstrate simultaneous left-handedness for both polarization states. Furthermore, we find that electric birefringence and dichroism are significantly enhanced with increasing control field strength, while magnetic birefringence and dichroism can be fully controlled via strong laser coupling.These findings have promising implications for spintronics, image transmission in metamaterials, and the development of optical switches and high-speed data transmission devices, opening new avenues in quantum optics and photonics.

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Birefringence and dichroism in atomic systems are active areas of research. Circular dichroism is typically observed in chiral atoms, molecules (such as DNA), and optically asymmetric materials. These phenomena enable polarization-based selectivity and high-precision measurements with applications in optical systems, biomedical diagnostics, and advanced photonics.Meanwhile, negative refractive index materials offer exotic applications in optics and photonics, including super-resolution imaging, invisibility cloaking, and sub-wavelength imaging. Here, we identify a novel route to achieving birefringence and dichroism in a left-handed system for the first time.We investigate the optical activity of an atomic left-handed medium, analyzing the interaction of left- and right-circularly polarized light with different atomic states while incorporating local field corrections. Notably, our results demonstrate simultaneous left-handedness for both polarization states. Furthermore, we find that electric birefringence and dichroism are significantly enhanced with increasing control field strength, while magnetic birefringence and dichroism can be fully controlled via strong laser coupling.These findings have promising implications for spintronics, image transmission in metamaterials, and the development of optical switches and high-speed data transmission devices, opening new avenues in quantum optics and photonics.
Birefringence and dichroism in atomic systems are active areas of research. Circular dichroism is typically observed in chiral atoms, molecules (such as DNA), and optically asymmetric materials. These phenomena enable polarization-based selectivity and high-precision measurements with applications in optical systems, biomedical diagnostics, and advanced photonics. Meanwhile, negative-refractive-index materials offer exotic applications in optics and photonics, including superresolution imaging, invisibility cloaking, and subwavelength imaging. Here we identify a route to achieving birefringence and dichroism in a left-handed system. We investigate the optical activity of an atomic left-handed medium, analyzing the interaction of left- and right-circularly polarized light with different atomic states while incorporating local field corrections. Notably, our results demonstrate simultaneous left-handedness for both polarization states. Furthermore, we find that electric birefringence and dichroism are significantly enhanced with increasing control field strength, while magnetic birefringence and dichroism can be fully controlled via strong laser coupling. These findings have promising implications in fields at the interface of left-handedness and dichroism.
We investigate few-photon ionization of lithium atoms prepared in the polarized $2p\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}({m}_{\ensuremath{\ell}}=+1)$ state when subjected to femtosecond light pulses with left- or right-handed circular polarization at wavelengths between 665 and 920 nm. We consider whether ionization proceeds more favorably for the electric field co- or counter-rotating with the initial electronic current density. Strong asymmetries are found and quantitatively analyzed in terms of ``circular dichroism'' (CD). While the intensity dependence of the measured CD values is rather weak throughout the investigated regime, a very strong sensitivity on the center wavelength of the incoming radiation is observed. While the co-rotating situation overall prevails, the counter-rotating geometry is strongly favored around 800 nm due to the $2p\text{\ensuremath{-}}3s$ resonant transition, which can only be driven by counter-rotating fields. The observed features provide insights into the helicity dependence of light-atom interactions, and on the possible control of electron emission in atomic few-photon ionization by polarization-selective resonance enhancement.
Chiral materials possess some unusual properties for which they have attracted tremendous interest in recent research. In this paper, we discuss the interaction of electromagnetic fields with an initially isotropic material, making it anisotropic chiral by inducing magnetoelectric cross coupling. We consider a four-level double Λ -type configuration of an atomic ensemble, which is simultaneously sensitive to relative phase of the applied fields due to its closed-loop nature, providing an extra degree of freedom for controlling the birefringent nature of the medium. We show that the material splits a linearly polarized probe field into left- (LCP) and right-circularly polarized (RCP) components, and their angular divergence can be related to the optical activity of the medium. This leads to efficient modulation of the probe field, which may be helpful in accurate position detection of the transmitted beams and images. Next, we demonstrate that such a medium can be used to couple incident light with surface plasmons (SPs) in two ways: (1) as a prism-like coupler, in either Otto- or Kretschmann-type geometry, where excitation of SPs can be achieved beyond a certain incident angle of the interacting pulse in a plasmonic waveguide placed closed to it; and (2) direct excitation of SPs by a LCP or RCP beam from the chiral medium in a particular slit-type plasmonic waveguide. We find that the coupled modes in the latter case are unidirectional and highly tunable. Further, we show that the birefringent nature of the medium as well as the plasmonic field intensities can be efficiently manipulated with a number of controlling parameters. Our results may find applications in image coding, plasmonic sensors, and bio-photonics.
Chiral materials possess some unusual properties which make them interesting for useful applications in nanophotonics. In this work, we review the basic techniques used to achieve electromagnetically induced chirality in initially isotropic materials and mention some of their novel operations. Next, we investigate the transmission characteristics of two different multi-level atomic models in which chirality is introduced by magnetoelectric cross coupling of external electromagnetic fields with atomic transitions, leading to quantum coherence. The left-(lcp) and right-circularly polarized (rcp) beams, the two eigenmodes of a chiral medium, are shown to transmit in an anti-symmetric manner with respect to the probe field detuning and control field magnitude variations. This selective transmission of a particular mode at specific detunings may find applications in optical isolation and storage. We further demonstrate that the driving control fields and their effective phase can be used as tuning knobs to manipulate the medium's birefringence and the transmission of the eigenmodes.
Abstract The birefringence of rotary photon drags is investigated through induced chiral atomic medium. The birefringence of refractive and group indices, divergent angle and rotary photon drags were controlled and modified with detuning, phases and strength of Rabi frequencies of the driving fields. The value of divergent angle oscillated between ±0.01 radian with phases of control fields φ 3,4 and is minimum at φ 3 = π , while maximum at φ 4 = π . The right and left circularly polarized beams are drag clockwise due clockwise spinning of the medium in the normal dispersive region, while the right and left circularly polarized beams are drag clockwise due anticlockwise spinning of the medium in anomalous dispersive region. The maximum rotary photon drags of birefringent beams of light is calculated to ±5 milli radian. The results show advancement in molecular structure, dual image coding and image designing technology.
Large Faraday rotations can be generated by circular birefringence of atomic samples in an axial magnetic field in the vicinity of atomic resonance lines. More generally, magneto-optical effects in atomic samples include circular dichroism in addition to birefringence, resulting in a modification of the ellipticity as well as the polarization alignment. Usually such effects are investigated for homogeneous linear polarizations, but the mechanisms apply also to polarization structures such as vector vortices. We investigate the effect of optical activity of a rubidium vapor in the hyperfine Paschen–Back regime along the D2 line, for the example of azimuthally polarized input light. We show that for low atomic densities, circular birefringence dominates over dichroism, and azimuthal polarization is rotated toward radial polarization. The rotation angle increases with increasing optical densities. At high vapor temperatures, dichroism becomes more and more relevant, leading to intricate variations of both alignment and ellipticity. Our results shine new light on the interplay between different magneto-optic effects at strong magnetic fields. Their highly sensitive response to detuning may find applications in spectroscopy and quantum sensing.