V. Gasparian et al., FARADAY-ROTATION AND COMPLEX-VALUED TRAVERSAL TIME FOR CLASSICAL LIGHT WAVES, Physical review letters, 75(12), 1995, pp. 2312-2315
We introduce a magnetic clock approach to measure the traversal and re
flection times of an electromagnetic wave through a slab, when multipl
e reflections are taken into account. The traversal time is a complex
quantity whose real component is proportional to the Faraday rotation
and whose imaginary component is proportional to the degree of ellipti
city. We conclude that the complex traversal time found for an electro
n by several different methods is not a consequence of the quantum nat
ure of the particle, but due to the wavelike character of the entity i
nvolved.