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Phys. Rev. A 80, 043810 (2009) [7 pages]

Spin Hall effect of a light beam in left-handed materials

Hailu Luo, Shuangchun Wen, Weixing Shu, Zhixiang Tang, Yanhong Zou, and Dianyuan Fan
Key Laboratory for Micro/Nano Opto-Electronic Devices of Ministry of Education, School of Computer and Communication, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Received 8 June 2009; published 12 October 2009

We establish a general propagation model to describe the spin Hall effect of light beam in left-handed materials (LHMs). A spin-dependent shift of the beam centroid perpendicular to the refractive index gradient for the light beam through an air-LHM interface is demonstrated. For a certain circularly polarized component, whether the transverse shift is positive or negative depends on the magnitude of the refractive index gradient. Very surprisingly, the spin Hall effect in the LHM is unreversed, although the sign of refractive index gradient is reversed. The physics underlying this counterintuitive effect is that the spin angular momentum of photons is unreversed. Further, we reveal that the angular shift in the LHM is reversed due to the negative diffraction. These findings provide alternative evidence for that the linear momentum of photons is reversed, while the spin angular momentum is unreversed in the LHM.

©2009 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.043810
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.80.043810
PACS: 42.25.-p; 42.79.-e; 41.20.Jb; 78.20.Ci
  • 42.25.-p
    Wave optics
  • 42.79.-e
    Optical elements, devices, and systems
  • 41.20.Jb
    Electromagnetic wave propagation; radiowave propagation
  • 78.20.Ci
    Optical constants
  • YEAR: 2009
KEYWORDS: metamaterials, refractive index, spin Hall effect

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