Gyrotropic left-handed media: Energy flux and circular dichroism

Abstract The gyrotropic left-handed material (LHM) with periodicity and uniaxial anisotropy is considered. It has permittivity and permeability tensors with a spatial dispersion of imaginary non-diagonal elements and real negative diagonal elements such as e xx = e yy = - e , μ xx = μ yy = - μ . The circular dichroism (Faraday effect and/or or quasioptical activity) of LHM is analysed and the rotation of polarization plane is calculated. The obtained angle of rotation has harmonic periodicity along electromagnetic wave propagation in z -direction. It increases due to the interaction of wave with resonance frequencies of the LHM lattice. The derived Umov–Poynting vector has opposite sign to the wave vector at small gyrotropy and tends to change sign with gyrotropy increase. It is shown that gyrotropy enhances an energy flux with respect to that in non-gyrotropic materials.