<title>Light propagation in chiral and magnetochiral random media: the impact of broken symmetries</title>

Abstract

We investigate light transport and scattering in random media with broken mirror and/or time-reversal symmetries. Using microscopic transport theory, we demonstrate the residual circular polarization of diffuse light in chiral optical media, associated with broken mirror symmetry. We introduce a model to describe light scattering in inhomogeneous magnetochiral media, which occurs for broken mirror nd time-reversal symmetries. In such media, we define a new optical measure for the degree of chirality and calculate it for some simple chiral systems and even use it to probe the chirality of random media.