On light propagation in helicoidal bianisotropic mediums

Abstract

Abstract We have shown liquid crystals to be members of the more general class of helicoidal bianisotropic mediums (HBMs) and have discussed physical realizations of HBMs as liquid crystals, cross-linked polymer networks and solid thin films. Solutions of the time-harmonic Maxwell postulates for axial propagation in a HBM have been derived in terms of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a 4 x 4 matrix. We have given a procedure to obtain the response of a HBM slab to a normally incident plane wave and exemplified our analytical results by application to four mediums.