Propagation of electromagnetic waves in media undergoing complex motions (Q862649)

The authors present and discuss theoretical and experimental results related to the propagation of electromagnetic waves in media undergoing complex motion. Specifically, a new relativistic effect is studied, for a medium with permittivity and magnetic permeability undergoing a rotation, namely the curvature of the trajectory traced out by a monochromatic plane electromagnetic wave. An exact analytical solution is obtained for the trajectory of the wave vector of a monochromatic electromagnetic plane wave in a medium with non simple motion (translational flow). It is shown that the spatial drag of the electromagnetic wave by the moving medium can be described correctly in the general case only if nonlinear relativistic terms are taken into account.