Optical activity

Optical Vortices, Faraday Rotation, Optical Activity

Characteristic solutions to Maxwell's equations, constrained to equivalence classes by constitutive equations that have certain crystal symmetries, are represented by phase 1-forms, k, such that both 3-forms vanish: k^F = 0 and k^G = 0: Simple examples are given which show the di®erences between Faraday rotation where the 3-form of Topological Torsion is not zero, A^F 6= 0, and Optical Activity...

Optical Activity of Petroleum

HE question of the origin of petroleum has long been debated. In the history of this question, the fact of the optical activity of petroleum has occupied an important place. It was pointed out ( 1 , 2 ) by Walden that "inorganic" hypotheses for explaining the origin of petroleum did not account for its optical activity. Because of the increasing certainty that all petroleums possessed optical a...

Optical activity from racemates.

To the Editor — The relationship between chirality and optical activity is an important consideration for various fields of chemical, physical and biological research. For example, the determination of optical activity is a routine test of enantiomeric purity in organic synthesis. Chiral materials (or other non-centrosymmetric (NCS) materials) are also commonly used in optics and photonics to c...

Metamaterials: optical activity without chirality.

We report that the classical phenomenon of optical activity, which is traditionally associated with chirality (helicity) of organic molecules, proteins, and inorganic structures, can be observed in artificial planar media which exhibit neither 3D nor 2D chirality. We observe the effect in the microwave and optical parts of the spectrum at oblique incidence to regular arrays of nonchiral subwave...

Dispersionless optical activity in metamaterials