Negative reflection in a Faraday chiral medium

TL;DR

This paper explores negative reflection phenomena in a Faraday chiral medium, revealing how strong magnetoelectric coupling can lead to negative refraction and complex reflection behaviors for incident waves.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of negative reflection in Faraday chiral media and analyzes the associated wave propagation characteristics with high magnetoelectric coupling.

Findings

Negative reflection occurs with positive/negative phase velocity incident waves.

Multiple reflected waves with varying phase velocities can be generated.

Negative refraction possibilities are enhanced in the studied medium.

Abstract

The four wavenumbers associated with planewave propagation in a Faraday chiral medium (FCM) with relatively huge magnetoelectric coupling give rise to enhanced possibilities for negative-phase-velocity propagation and therefore negative refraction. They can also give rise to the phenomenon of negative reflection. In particular, for a nondissipative example, we deduced that an incident plane wave with positive/negative phase velocity can result in a negatively reflected plane wave with negative/positive phase velocity, as well as a positively reflected plane wave with positive/negative phase velocity.