The conditions for the preservation of duality symmetry in a linear medium

Abstract

Electric magnetic duality symmetry is well understood in vacuum. For light propagating through a medium this symmetry is typically broken. We investigate under what conditions duality symmetry is preserved in a linear medium and employ these conditions to generalise the definition of optical helicity to a general linear medium. We will discuss some unique properties duality symmetric media possess, provided they exist, and reformulate Maxwell’s equation in such a way that they explicitly show the decoupling of opposite helicities. The feasibility of constructing a duality symmetric medium is discussed.