Berry effect in unmagnetized inhomogeneous cold plasmas

Abstract

The propagation of electromagnetic waves in an unmagnetized weakly inhomogeneous cold plasma is examined. We show that the inhomogeneity induces a gauge connection term in wave equation, which gives rise to Berry effects in the dynamics of polarized rays in the post geometric optics approximation. The polarization plane of a plane polarized ray rotates as a result of the geometric Berry phase, which is the Rytov rotation. Also, the Berry curvature causes the optical Hall effect, according to which, rays of left/right circular polarization deflect oppositely to produce a spin current directed across the direction of propagation.

Spin Hall effect of light in inhomogeneous axion field

“…Experimentally, the r.m.s fluctuations given by (21) corresponds to the standard deviation of a large data sample {x i ⊥ } collected over time from a cosmically distant source of circularly polarized radiation, x i ⊥ being the position of the point (with respect to the origin, i x i ⊥ = 0) where the fluctuating ray (of a given wavelength) hits the transverse 'photographic plate' at time i (FIG. 2).…”

“…The present work is motivated by the fact that inhomogeneity in propagation medium generally leads to spin transport effects [15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. We, thus, consider the effect of the spatial fluctuations of the axion field that have survived the inflation, on the spin (polarization) transport of light.…”

“…Spin transport of electromagnetic and transverse acoustical waves in weakly inhomogeneous media exhibits two principle features, which have been derived using the geometric optics approximation and its adaptations [15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. These features are (i) the rotation of the polarization plane (the Rytov rotation [23,24]) for linearly polarized waves, which is an example of the geometric Berry phase [25], and (ii) the spin Hall (or Magnus) effect for circularly polarized rays, according to which, rays of different polarization propagate along oppositely deflected directions [26,27].…”

Cosmological birefringence and the geometric phase of photons

“…Because of the dependence on polarization of optical and transverse acoustical wave propagation in inhomogeneous media, there occurs similar polarization rotation (the Rytov rotation), which is established to be a manifestation of the Berry phase of the quanta (photons/phonons) of the quantized wave fields [12][13][14]. In this work, we show that the cosmological birefringence likewise arises from an adiabatic noncyclic geometric phase that appears in the quntum state of the photons because of their interaction with the slowly varying pseudo-scalar field.…”

The effect of Dirac phase on acoustic vortex in media with screw dislocation

“…This change is due to Dirac phase and is robust against fluctuations. Dirac phase belongs in the category of non-integrable phase factors that appear in many different areas of Physics [31][32][33]. Dirac showed that when a particle transports in an external electromagnetic field, its wave function acquires a phase term in addition to usual dynamic phase factor [34,35].…”