Formalism of optical coherency in material media with a quantum mechanical treatment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum-inspired formalism for optical coherence in material media, enabling the analysis of interference effects and superposition of deterministic states, extending traditional polarization descriptions.

Contribution

It develops a novel quantum mechanical analogy-based formalism to incorporate coherence and interference effects into optical media analysis, surpassing classical Stokes-Mueller limitations.

Findings

Formalism accounts for global phase and coherency effects

Applied to polarimetric response of plasmonic nanoantennas

Generalizes superposition of optical media states

Abstract

The fluctuations or disordered motion of the electromagnetic fields are described by statistical properties rather than instantaneous values. This statistical description of the optical fields is underlying in the Stokes-Mueller formalism that applies to measurable intensities. However, the fundamental concept of optical coherence, that is assessed by the ability of waves to interfere, is not treatable by this formalism because it omits the global phase. In this work we show that, using an analogy between deterministic matrix states associated to optical media and quantum mechanical wavefunctions, it is possible to construct a general formalism that accounts for the additional terms resulting from the coherency effects that average out for incoherent treatments. This method generalizes further the concept of coherent superposition to describe how deterministic states of optical media can superpose to generate another deterministic media state. Our formalism of coherency is used to study the combined polarimetric response of interfering plasmonic nanoantennas.