Electromagnetic description of three-dimensional time-reversal invariant ponderable topological insulators

TL;DR

This paper develops a Green's function method to analyze electromagnetic interactions with real three-dimensional topological insulators, incorporating their dielectric and magnetic properties, and extends previous idealized models to more realistic scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a practical approach to compute electromagnetic fields in ponderable topological insulators with piecewise constant properties, generalizing previous idealized models to real materials.

Findings

Successfully reproduces known results for ideal cases.

Generalizes the Green's function approach to inhomogeneous media.

Provides a framework for experimental measurement of topological insulator interactions.

Abstract

A general technique to analyze the classical interaction between ideal topological insulators, and electromagnetic sources and fields, has been previously elaborated. Nevertheless it is not immediately applicable in the laboratory as it fails to describe real ponderable media. In this work we provide a description of real topologically insulating materials taking into account their dielectric and magnetic properties. For inhomogeneous permittivity and permeability, the problem of finding the Green's function must be solved in an ad hoc manner. Nevertheless, the physically feasible cases of piecewise constant $\varepsilon, \mu$ and $\theta$ make the problem tractable, where $\theta$ encodes the topological magnetoelectric polarizability properties of the medium. To this end we employ the Green's function method to find the fields resulting form the interaction between these materials and electromagnetic sources. Furthermore we exploit the fact that in the cases here studied, the full Green's function can be successfully found if the Green's function of the corresponding ponderable media with $\theta = 0$ is known. Our results, satisfactorily reproduce previously existing ones and also generalize some others. The method here elaborated can be exploited to determine the electromagnetic fields for more general configurations aiming to measure the interaction between real 3D topological insulators and electromagnetic fields.