Effects of a chiral atomic medium on the manipulation of light birefringence and lateral Goos–Hänchen shifts via Kerr nonlinearity and local field effects

Abstract

We present a new scheme to report on the effects of a five-level chiral atomic medium on the lateral Goos–Hänchen (GH) shift in Gaussian probe beams via Kerr nonlinearity (KNL) and local field effects. The physical realization of birefringence in absorption, dispersion, reflection and transmission beams is investigated, with special emphasis on the manipulation of absolute and fractional change in lateral GH shifts in birefringence transmission and reflection beams, via local fields and Kerr nonlinearity. We have employed a semiclassical atomic density-matrix formalism so as to obtain the expression for electric and magnetic susceptibilities of the chiral medium and the corresponding chirality coefficients in conjunction with Kerr and local fields, both separately and in combination. Stationary-phase theory is used to compute GH shift from the calculated birefringent reflection and transmission coefficients of probe beams. A negative and positive GH shift is observed in reflection and transmission beams, respectively, subjected to local field and Kerr effect. In contrast, a positive GH shift is observed in both reflection and transmission beams in the presence of both local field and Kerr effects. The local and Kerr fields also alter the divergence angle between left and right circularly polarized birefringence beams. GH shift depends on incident angle and probe detuning. The anisotropy of medium is lessened by switching ON the Kerr field in the medium. We observed a positive fractional change of ±30% in the GH shift in the birefringence reflection beam in the presence of a local field without KNL, while a 20% fractional GH shift was observed in the presence of both local field and KNL effects. Our results suggest promising applications in nonlinear optical, plasmonic and biophotonic devices for the manipulation of light propagation and optical signal processing.