Talk:Magneto-optic effect

This stuff is way outside my field but it seemed like this sentence was a little odd "A magneto-optic effect is any one of a number of phenomena in which an electromagnetic wave interacts with a magnetic field, or with matter under the influence of a magnetic field."

Isn't this about a light wave interacting with a magnetic field? If not, where does the "optic" part come in? --Lee Hunter 19:25, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


 * It's currently very confusingly worded. In classical E&M, light can't interact with a magnetic field.  What's happenning is that the magnetic field is changing the properties of the material (similar to the electric field-induced pockels and Kerr effects), which affects the light propagating through that material.  Unfortunately I've never worked with this effect personally, so I really can't add anything else. --Laura Scudder | Talk 20:01, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

This topic is exactly my field of speciality and, as the article points out, the text is in need of an expert. There are several grave errors. Prof R Atkinson Queen's University Belfast UK. I will fix it up if I am contacted to do so. RA/QUB 2/1/2006

Laura is absolutely correct. Light cannot interact with a magnetic field directly. The interaction between the electromagnetic wave is through spin-orbit coupling of the electron in the material. Hence she is right when she says the properties of the material are changed by the presence of the magnetic field. RA/QUB 2/1/2006

Magneto-optic effects are referred to as Faraday effects in transmission and Kerr effects in reflection. They are usually small for linear interactions though in the nonlinear case they may be very large. The effects are changes in the polarisation state of the radiation.RA/QUB 2/1/2006

Kerr magneto-optic effect redirects here. I shall write a separate article about it, I guess it should be done. --Ton e  21:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Magneto-optic eddy-current imaging?
How about adding a section about magneto-optic eddy-current imaging as used for detection of shallow cracks in materials? I'm not an expert on this, but just came across some literature references to the technique in the context of failure analysis. DFH 10:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

question about optical isomers
The last sentence of the lead reads:

Two gyrotropic materials with reversed rotation directions of the two principal polarizations, corresponding to complex-conjugate ε tensors for lossless media, are called optical isomers.

May I ask, does this intend that the two gyrotropic materials are chemically and crystallographically the same apart from the optical difference? Organic chemists are familiar with apparently (apart from the present concern) pure substances that crystallize into two different crystal forms that are chirally different, but otherwise the same. These are called optical isomers. I suppose one can imagine two chemically unrelated substances that are "optical isomers" only because of their optical relation?Chjoaygame (talk) 05:50, 20 April 2016 (UTC)