Faraday and Kerr Effects in Right and Left-Handed Films and Layered Materials

In the present work, we study the rotations of the polarization of light propagating in right and left-handed films and layered structures. Through the use of complex values representing the rotations we analyze the transmission (Faraday effect) and reflections (Kerr effect) of light. It is shown that the real and imaginary parts of the complex angle of Faraday and Kerr rotations are odd and even functions for the refractive index n, respectively. In the thin film case with left-handed materials there are large resonant enhancements of the reflected Kerr angle that could be obtained experimentally. In the magnetic clock approach, used in the tunneling time problem, two characteristic time components are related to the real and imaginary portions of the complex Faraday rotation angle. The complex angle at the different propagation regimes through a finite stack of alternating right and left-handed materials is analyzed in detail. We found that, in spite of the fact that Re(θ) in the forbidden gap is almost zero, the Im(θ) changes drastically in both value and sign.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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