Canonical Sources and Duality in Chiral Media
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Abstract
Chiral media are characterized by the constitutive relations D = εE + iXicB and H = B/µ + iXicE where Xic is the chirality admittance introduced to take into account macroscopic handedness or optical activity inherent in the media. In addition we define a chirality impedance and a dimensionless chirality factor to describe the wave properties of this medium. As known for some time, this medium supports the plane-wave propagation of circularly polarized waves of opposing handedness and differing wavenumbers. Here we examine the radiation of electromagnetic waves from a set of simple canonical arrays. This leads us to the notion of duality for chiral media which can be exhibited in a surprisingly simple form. We show that in the far field, both point and extended sources, whether electric or magnetic, radiate two electromagnetic eigenmodes which are of opposing handedness. We also demonstrate sources which access only one of the eigenmodes of the medium. Several applications of the results and array performance in chiral media are noted.