AN EIGENVALUE THEORY OF CIRCULAR BIREFRINGENCE AND DICHROISM IN A NONMAGNETIC CHIRAL MEDIUM

By means of known constitutive relations for the DBAR and HBAR fields, which include both electric quadrupole and magnetic dipole terms, an eigenvalue theory is developed for electromagnetic wave propagation in an absorbing chiral medium. The theory allows the polarization eigenv ectors to be determined, which the medium supports, and also their ref ractive indices and absorption coefficients. Uniaxial and cubic crysta ls, as well as an ideal gas, are treated in this way, and expressions are derived for their circular birefringence and dichroism in terms of property tensors of the medium. These expressions are shown to be ind ependent of the arbitrary origin to which the multipole moments are re ferred. The theory is also applicable to artificial chiral materials w hich are ''optically active'' in the microwave regime.