Reply to Comment on ‘No circular birefringence exists in a chiral medium: an analysis of single-mode refraction’

Abstract

Based on their finding that the circularly polarized Beltrami fields are solutions to their eigenvalue equation (7), the authors of preceding Comment claim that the linearly polarized basis is inapplicable to light waves in an isotropic chiral medium. We show that the analysis is flawed. The reason is twofold. Firstly, we prove that the Beltrami fields are, by definition, not a polarization basis for both the electric and magnetic fields of light waves in the chiral medium. Secondly, we demonstrate that linearly polarized and circularly polarized waves in the chiral medium are on the same footing if the electric and magnetic fields, rather than the Beltrami fields, are considered.

Keywords

• polarization of light
• isotropic chiral media
• nonexistence of circular birefringence
• optical rotation
• propagation velocity
• polarization basis