Light propagation in a cholesteric medium has been completely discussed by de Vries [2]. The main results are that, for a given frequency, there are two eigenvibrations with quasi-circular polarizations, except i) for high frequencies and ii) near the reflection band (for the vibration having total reflection), where the polarization is linear. Looking at light refracted by a cholesteric prism,...

The laws of reflection and refraction are typically derived using a dispersion relation that assumes that the angular frequency stays the same across a vacuum–dielectric interface and that the angular wave number increases. At the single photon level, this means that the total energy of the photon is conserved but the linear momentum is not. Here I derive the laws of reflection and refraction f...

Light focusing and imaging represent some of the oldest applications of optics. Despite centuries of developments, however, conventional optical systems still suffer from aberrations of different types and are limited to plane-to-plane imaging, issues that are inherent to the conventional laws of reflection and refraction [1]. Metamaterials and metasurfaces have offered a route to partially ove...

We report our experimental results on two-dimensional left-handed metamaterials (LHM) exhibiting negative refraction and subwavelength imaging. Transmission and reflection spectra of LHM are studied and a left-handed transmission band is observed at the frequencies where both dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability are negative. Impedance matching is verified both with the experiments...

In a recent Brief Comment, the results of an experiment to measure the refraction of a particle beam were reported [P. Muggli et al., Nature 411, 43 (2001)]. The refraction takes place at a passive interface between a plasma and a gas. Here the full paper on which that Comment is based is presented. A theoretical model extends the results presented previously [T. Katsouleas et al., Nucl. Instru...

We present a method for the determination of crustal structure by simultaneous inversion of seismic refraction and wide-angle reflection traveltimes for 3-D interface geometry and layer velocity. Crustal structure is represented by layers in which velocity varies linearly with depth, separated by smooth interfaces with a cubic B-spline parametrization. Lateral variations in structure are theref...