Lorentz-boosted evanescent waves
Optics
2018-05-08 v2
Abstract
Polarization, spin, and helicity are important properties of electromagnetic waves. It is commonly believed that helicity is invariant under the Lorentz transformations. This is indeed so for plane waves and their localized superpositions. However, this is not the case for evanescent waves, which are well-defined only in a half-space, and are characterized by complex wave vectors. Here we describe transformations of evanescent electromagnetic waves and their polarization/spin/helicity properties under the Lorentz boosts along the three spatial directions.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.05145,
title = {Lorentz-boosted evanescent waves},
author = {Konstantin Y. Bliokh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.05145},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
12 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Lett. A