Optical activity tensor for radiating atomic and molecular systems

Alexei M. Frolov; David M. Wardlaw

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arXiv · 1009.6016

Optical activity tensor for radiating atomic and molecular systems

Alexei M. Frolov·David M. Wardlaw

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Abstract

The optical activity tensor (OAT) is explicitly derived. It is shown that to evaluate a large number of effects related to optical activity of some atomic/molecular system at arbitrary frequency $ω$ of the incident light, one needs to know only four optical activity tensors which have twelve irreducible (tensor) components. An additional amplification factor contains one $3 \times 3$ tensor of light scattering with three irreducible components. The explicit dependence of all irreducible components of OAT upon $ω$ and some molecular parameters is derived and discussed. We apply OAT to explain the dispersion of optical rotation in dilute solutions of organic molecules. This study opens a new avenue in application of methods of modern Quantum Electrodynamics to the optical activity.

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Alexei M. Frolov, David M. Wardlaw. 2010-10-25. Optical activity tensor for radiating atomic and molecular systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/1009.6016

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