Optical activity tensor for radiating atomic and molecular systems

TL;DR

This paper derives the optical activity tensor (OAT) explicitly, showing that its evaluation requires only four tensors with twelve components, and applies this to explain optical rotation dispersion in organic solutions.

Contribution

The paper provides a new explicit derivation of the optical activity tensor and its frequency dependence, advancing the application of quantum electrodynamics to optical activity analysis.

Findings

Explicit expression for the optical activity tensor (OAT) derived.

OAT depends on four tensors with twelve components and a scattering tensor.

Application to optical rotation dispersion in organic molecules.

Abstract

The optical activity tensor (OAT) is explicitly derived. It is shown that to evaluate a large number of effects related to optical activity of some atomic/molecular system at arbitrary frequency $\omega$ of the incident light, one needs to know only four optical activity tensors which have twelve irreducible (tensor) components. An additional amplification factor contains one $3 \times 3$ tensor of light scattering with three irreducible components. The explicit dependence of all irreducible components of OAT upon $\omega$ and some molecular parameters is derived and discussed. We apply OAT to explain the dispersion of optical rotation in dilute solutions of organic molecules. This study opens a new avenue in application of methods of modern Quantum Electrodynamics to the optical activity.