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The Faraday Effect as a Two-State Quantum Process

Quantum Physics 2024-10-04 v2

Abstract

We show that the Faraday effect can be derived from a simple two-state model. This approach uses a quantized electromagnetic field and does not make reference to differences in refractive indices of left- and right-circularly polarized light. Instead it treats the effect as a forward Rayleigh scattering process between two orthogonal modes of the quantized field, and thus emphasises the quantum-mechanical aspects of the phenomenon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2410.01612,
  title  = {The Faraday Effect as a Two-State Quantum Process},
  author = {Benjamin W. Butler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.01612},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T19:05:22.074Z