ar X iv : p hy si cs / 0 40 81 03 v 1 2 3 A ug 2 00 4 A right - handed isotropic medium with a negative refractive index

The sign of the refractive index of any medium is soley determined by the requirement that the propagation of an electromagnetic wave obeys Einstein causality. Our analysis shows that this requirement predicts that the real part of the refractive index may be negative in an isotropic medium even if the electric permittivity and the magnetic permeability are both positive. Such a system may be a route to negative index media at optical frequencies. We also demonstrate that the refractive index may be positive in left-handed media that contain two molecular species where one is in its excited state.