Electromagnetic and imaging properties of chiral dispersive spherical interfaces under bimodal propagation using ABCD matrices

The properties of thick lenses are altered substantially in the presence of chirality and material dispersion. Recent work has involved examining of a chiral thick lens by re-deriving the related ABCD matrices based on standard paraxial and meridional conditions. A salient feature of a chiral thick lens is the inherent bimodal propagation via circular polarizations. Additionally, determination of image intensities requires the electromagnetic transmission properties expressed via the Fresnel coefficients. Three different scenarios are considered, viz., first-order frequency-dependent material dispersion of the dielectric permittivity, the lens material being chiral, and the case of an air gap (shaped like a thick lens) embedded in a chiral host. Under chirality, two sets of ABCD matrices are derived for right- and left-circularly polarized modes. The analyses and results are compared with the standard achiral problem. For imaging purposes, a simple 1D colored transparency is placed as an object before the thick lens in each scenario, with the transmission across the spherical boundaries examined via the ABCD parameters; also, the plane-wave amplitude transmitted across the system under different chirality bands and physical parameters is examined using the corresponding Fresnel coefficients. Under dispersion, image characteristics such as foci, location, magnification, and amplitude are controlled by narrow sidebands around a monochromatic carrier and the chirality. It is found that significant differences arise in the three imaging systems leading to the comparisons presented here. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America