Radiation and scattering from thin wires in chiral media

Abstract

The effect of chirality on thin wire antennas and scatterers in unbounded chiral material is examined through the application of fundamental principles and the examination of several canonical examples. In particular, the interplay between normalized chirality and wire length is investigated to classify radiation and scattering patterns. Chirality induces rapid decay in the currents on such wires, resulting in mountain-peak-shaped current distributions characteristic of wire antennas and bow-tie-shaped distributions characteristic of wire scatterers of sufficient length. These current distributions, in turn, cause radiation and scattering patterns which exhibit a chirality-dependent forbidden zone for both antennas and scatterers. In this zone, the fields are greatly reduced. These distinctive results lead naturally to the classification of wire scattering and radiation into subchiral, chiral, and superchiral regimes. All results are understood from the underlying physical principles of electromagnetic chirality, and are related to values of a dimensionless parameter involving normalized chirality and normalized wire length.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>