Issue |
EPL
Volume 106, Number 5, June 2014
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 54002 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Electromagnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Heat Transfer, Classical Mechanics, and Fluid Dynamics | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/106/54002 | |
Published online | 30 May 2014 |
Babinet's principle in double-refraction systems
1 Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers URU 435, Université de Rennes 1 - 35042 Rennes, France
2 Laboratoire d'Electronique Quantique et Chiralités - 20 square Marcel Bouget, 35700 Rennes, France
(a) guy.ropars@univ-rennes1.fr
Received: 9 May 2014
Accepted: 19 May 2014
Babinet's principle applied to systems with double refraction is shown to involve spatial interchanges between the ordinary and extraordinary patterns observed through two complementary screens. As in the case of metamaterials, the extraordinary beam does not follow the Snell-Descartes refraction law, the superposition principle has to be applied simultaneously at two points. Surprisingly, by contrast to the intuitive impression, in the presence of the screen with an opaque region, we observe that the emerging extraordinary photon pattern, which however has undergone a deviation, remains fixed when a natural birefringent crystal is rotated while the ordinary one rotates with the crystal. The twofold application of Babinet's principle implies intensity and polarization interchanges but also spatial and dynamic interchanges which should occur in birefringent metamaterials.
PACS: 41.20.Jb – Electromagnetic wave propagation; radiowave propagation / 42.25.Lc – Birefringence / 78.20.Ci – Optical constants (including refractive index, complex dielectric constant, absorption, reflection and transmission coefficients, emissivity)
© EPLA, 2014
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