Nonlinear optics as gauge theory

Question

the widely used approach to nonlinear optics is a Taylor expansion of the dielectric displacement field $\mathbf{D} = \epsilon_0\cdot\mathbf{E} + \mathbf{P}$ in a Fourier representation of the polarization $\mathbf{P}$ in terms of the dielectric susceptibility $\mathcal{X}$:

$\mathbf{P} = \epsilon_0\cdot(\mathcal{X}^{(1)}(\mathbf{E}) + \mathcal{X}^{(2)}(\mathbf{E},\mathbf{E}) + \dots)$ .

This expansion does not work anymore if the excitation field has components close to the resonance of the medium. Then, one has to take the whole quantum mechanical situation into account by e.g. describing light/matter interaction by a two-level Hamiltonian.

But this approach is certainly not the most general one.

Intrinsically nonlinear formulations of electrodynamics

So, what kind of nonlinear formulations of electrodynamics given in a Lagrangian formulation are there?

One known ansatz is the Born-Infeld model as pointed out by Raskolnikov. There, the Lagrangian density is given by

$\mathcal{L} = b^2\cdot \left[ \sqrt{-\det (g_{\mu \nu})} - \sqrt{-\det(g_{\mu \nu} + F_{\mu \nu}/b)} \right]$

and the theory has some nice features as for example a maximum energy density and its relation to gauge fields in string theory. But as I see it, this model is an intrinsically nonlinear model for the free-space field itself and not usefull for describing nonlinear matter interaction.

The same holds for an ansatz of the form

$\mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4}F^{\mu\nu}F_{\mu\nu} + \lambda\cdot\left( F^{\mu\nu}F_{\mu\nu} \right)^2$

proposed by Mahzoon and Riazi. Of course, describing the system in Quantum Electrodynamics is intrinsically nonlinear and ... to my mind way to complicated for a macroscopical description for nonlinear optics. The question is: Can we still get a nice formulation of the theory, say, as a mean field theory via an effective Lagrangian?

I think a suitable ansatz could be

$\mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4}M^{\mu\nu}F_{\mu\nu}$

where $M$ now accounts for the matter reaction and depends in a nonlinear way on $\mathbf{E}$ and $\mathbf{B}$, say

$M^{\mu\nu} = T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta}F_{\alpha\beta}$

where now $T$ is a nonlinear function of the field strength and might obey certain symmetries. The equation $T = T\left( F \right)$ remains unknown and depends on the material.

Metric vs. $T$ approach

As pointed out by space_cadet, one might ask the question why the nonlinearity is not better suited in the metric itself. I think this is a matter of taste. My point is that explicitly changing the metric might imply a non-stationary spacetime in which a Fourier transformation might not be well defined. It might be totally sufficient to treat spacetime as Lorentzian manifold.
Also, we might need a simple spacetime structure later on to explain the material interaction since the polarization $\mathbf{P}$ depends on the matter response generally in terms of an integration over the past, say

$\mathbf{P}(t) = \int_{-\infty}^{t}R\left[\mathbf{E}\right](\tau )d\tau$

with $R$ beeing some nonlinear response function(al) related to $T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta}$.

Examples for $T$

To illustrate the idea of $T$, here are some examples.
For free space, $T$ it is given by $T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta} = g^{\mu\alpha}g^{\nu\beta}$ resulting in the free-space Lagrangian $\mathcal{L} = -\frac{1}{4}T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta}F_{\alpha\beta}F_{\mu\nu} = -\frac{1}{4}F^{\mu\nu}F_{\mu\nu}$ The Lagrangian of Mahzoon and Riazi can be reconstructed by
$T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta} = \left( 1 + \lambda F^{\gamma\delta}F_{\gamma\delta} \right)\cdot g^{\mu\alpha}g^{\nu\beta}$.
One might be able to derive a Kerr nonlinearity using this Lagrangian.

So, is anyone familiar in a description of nonlinear optics/electrodynamics in terms of a gauge field theory or something similar to the thoughts outlined here?

Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Robert

Comments on the first Bounty

I want to thank everyone actively participating in the discussion, especially Greg Graviton, Marek, Raskolnikov, space_cadet and Willie Wong. I am enjoying the discussion relating to this question and thankfull for all the nice leads you gave. I decided to give the bounty to Willie since he gave the thread a new direction introducing the material manifold to us.
For now, I have to reconsider all the ideas and I hope I can come up with a new revision of the question that should be formulated in a clearer way as it is at the moment.
So, thank you again for your contributions and feel welcome to share new insights.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

Comments

@Robert: Of course you can, just many people may not understand you! I already clarified my point; foreign words are fine, but in my view should only really be used when there is no decent English equivalent. I don't even get your point. I'm English, I so write in English.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Noldorin

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@Noldorin: Thank you for your concern. But I guess that people who are used to scientific literature are familiar with those words. The irony is that the english language is not the mother tongue of a lot of people here; And the first moment a word gets used which is not instantaniously part of the vocabulary of a native speaker, it gets replaced. I really appreciate you helping to clearify things but this one was actually ... quite funny :)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@Robert: I really don't appreciate the sarcasm. Believe it or not, English is the lingua franca of today, in science and elsewhere. (What a shame the Nazis lost, eh?) And yes, I said that just to fulfill Godwin's law. Thank you.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Noldorin

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@Noldorin: I am sorry if I offended you. I delivered the message with a smile hoping you would see the funny part of the whole discussion. Really, noone doubts your second point but I hope you will excuse yourself later for the part in brackets.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@Robert: No, it was a joke (and a fact), so not at all.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Noldorin

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Well said Robert. The fact that english is used to communicate physics research, at the present. A few hundred years ago it was French and then German. Before that it was Latin. A few hundred years from now it will likely be some combination of Mandarin/Cantonese and Hindi.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user user346

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@space_cadet: Indeed. It might not even take that long...

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

Answer 1

Just a few random thoughts.

There is something important in your observation that the Born-Infeld model is essentially a free-space model. It is known to Boillat and Plebanski (separately in 1970) that the Born-Infeld model is the only model of electromagnetism (as a connection on a $U(1)$ vector bundle) that satisfies the following conditions

1. Covariance under Lorentz transformations
2. Reduces to Maxwell's equation in the small-field strength limit
3. $U(1)$ gauge symmetry
4. Integrable energy density for a point-charge
5. No birefringence (speed of light independent of polarization).

(the linear Maxwell system fails condition 4.) (See Michael Kiessling, "Electromagnetic field theory without divergence problems", J. Stat. Phys. (2004) doi:10.1023/B:JOSS.0000037250.72634.2a for an exposition on this and related issues.)

Now, since you are interested in nonlinear optics inside a material, instead of in vacuum, I think conditions 1 and 5 can safely be dropped. (Though you may want to keep 5 as a matter of course.) Condition 4 is intuitively pleasing, but maybe not too important, at least not until you have some candidate theories in mind that you want to distinguish. Condition 3 you must keep. Condition 2, on the other hand, really depends on what kind of material you have in mind.

In any case, a small suggestion: personally I think it is better to, from the get-go, write your proposed Lagrangian as

$$ L = T^{abcd} F_{ab}F_{cd} $$

instead of $M^{ab}F_{cd}$. I think it is generally preferable to consider Lagrangian field theories of at least quadratic dependence on the field variables. A pure linear term suggests to me an external potential which I don't think should be built into the theory.

If you want something like condition 2, but with a dielectric constant or such, then you must have that $T^{abcd}$ admit a Taylor expansion looking something like

$$ T^{abcd} = \tilde{g}^{ac}\tilde{g}^{bd} + O(|F|) $$

where $\tilde{g}$ is some effective metric for the material. Birefringence, however, you don't have to insert in explicitly: most likely a generic (linear or nonlinear) $T^{abcd}$ you write down will have birefringence; it is only when you try to rule it out that you will bring in some constraints.

An interesting thing is to consider what it means to have an analogous notion to condition 1. In the free-space case, condition 1 implies that the Lagrangian should only be a function of the Lorentz invariant $B^2 - E^2$ (in natural units) and of the pseudo-scalar invariant $B\cdot E$. In terms of the Faraday tensor these two invariants are $F^{ab}F_{ab}$ and $F^{ab}{}^*F_{ab}$ respectively, where ${}^*$ denote the Hodge dual. The determination of the linear part of your theory (of electromagnetic waves in a material) is essentially by what you will use to replace condition 1. If you assume your material is isotropic and homogeneous, then some similar sort of scalar + pseudo-scalar invariants is probably a good bet.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Willie Wong

Comments

(I should say that the above is inspired by some recent work of Ted Jacobson's on Einstein-Aether theory, which I think is somewhat related to Horava gravity.)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Willie Wong

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@Willie: Thank you very much for your further explanations. I have to admit that the notion of a material manifold is new to me. I always thought of entities defined on a background spacetime but with $\tilde{g}$ as the metric of that manifold, one could basically drop the $T$ approach in favour of this curved material manifold. I suppose the most simple example would be transformation optics with permittivity $\epsilon$ as $\tilde{g}$ if I am not entirely wrong. I am not sure what you mean by particle world lines in this sense; (timelike -> light) geodesics maybe?

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@Robert: Ah! Quick recap of relativistic elasticity. Spacetime $(M,g)$ is $d+1$ dimensional. Material manifold $(N,h)$ is $d$ dimensional Riemann. The material map $\Phi:M\to N$ sort of works like the Eulerian-Lagrangian transformation of fluid dynamics. We assume that $d\Phi$ is on-to and the kernel time-like. The particle word-lines are the curves $\Phi^{-1}(p)$ for some $p\in N$, it denotes, roughly, the trajectory in space-time of a fluid/material particle. For a mathematical introduction see Tahvildar-Zedah "Relativistic and nonrelativistic elastodynamics with small shear strains" ...

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Willie Wong

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...here. Or dx.doi.org/10.1016/0393-0440(92)90028-Y of Kijowski and Magli. Bobby Beig's summary is also very readable. Now, if you just want to implement a non-linear optical medium, you can pretty much forget about the underlying material (just assume that it exists and has some properties) and write $\tilde{g}$ to satisfy what you want. The point is that you can justify the breaking of Lorentz symmetry by appealing to this way of thought.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Willie Wong

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@Willie: Thank you very much for the explanations and references. I remember roughly that such a manifold is actually only used to justify the ansatz. One defines projections and finds something like $X_\perp = d\phi{(X)} - g(X,\xi)/(g(\xi ,\xi ))\xi$ for $\xi$ timelike and $\tilde{g}(X,Y) \equiv g(X_\perp ,Y_\perp)$ such that all calculations are actually performed on $M$ and everything can be put into $\phi$. This seems to be a sophisticated ansatz, I will also add it to the question if I can formulate it with my own words. My best wishes

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@Willie Wong: Thank you very much for your substantial answer. If I understand your argumentation correctly, one might not be able to find another intrinsically nonlinear formulation that is Lorentz-invariant. Having some relativistic background I would not dare to drop this condition. Do you think having something like $g\times{U(1)}$ with a new group coming from the matter interaction (maybe in some spirit of the electroweak interaction) would be a much better approach? Sincerely

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@Robert: Well, matter interaction will give all sorts of new things, but I do suspect that back-reaction can be in some-sense approximated by pure nonlinearities. One thing to note is the following: you can actually use some sort of Aether-theory idea to break local Lorentz invariance when keeping general covariance for the over-all theory. That is: if you take your optical medium to be some sort of fluid or elastic body evolving (possibly independently of the EM field in the linear approximation except through gravity) in space-time, you can define your "optical metric" $T$ through...

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Willie Wong

Answer 2

Nonlinear is a buzzword used to cover anything that is not linear. Depending on what kind of nonlinearity is involved, and thus what kind of material, there could be one symmetry or another, or there could be no symmetry at all. For instance, in superconductors, gauge symmetry is broken and photons behave as if they have acquired a mass. The result is that magnetic fields have limited penetration in the superconductor. And I think this is still described by linear equations.

I know of one gauge-invariant theory that is non-linear, this model is called the Born-Infeld model.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Raskolnikov

Comments

Thank you very much for your answer. I was not aware of the Born-Infeld theory of electrodynamics so far but it looks very interesting. You are also pointing to one important thing: different materials will have different symmetries. This is exactly what should cause different materials to obey different kinds of nonlinearities if they can be described by a gauge theory. For the moment we might not focus on further complicated things as symmetry breaking, if this is convenient for you.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

Answer 3

You have been asking some seriously interesting questions! Here's my take on this one ...

You say this about the Born-Infeld action:

But as I see it, this model is an intrinsically nonlinear model for the free-space field itself and not useful for describing nonlinear matter interaction.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "free-space" field. I take it that you're referring to $ F_{\mu\nu} $. Well there is no reason why one cannot define an $ F_{\mu\nu} $ for waves propagating non-linearly, within a medium or in a vacuum.

The matter-light interaction can be specified (at least in part if not wholly) by the form of $ g_{\mu\nu} $. Now bear with me for a minute. I'm not referring to the metric generated by some kind of matter. The metric in question does not, a priori, satisfy the Einstein equations. It is instead the effective metric experienced by the light-rays propagating within the given material. See these excellent papers by Ulf Leonhardt and Thomas Philbin [1],[2] for more details on this notion. In brief the off-diagonal components $ g_{ij}$ (where $ (i,j \in \{1,2,3\}\,\, i \neq j) $ encode the susceptibility tensor and the diagonal components $ g_{0i} $ determine the mixing between the electric and magnetic components of the wave.

As for the lagrangian density for the matter-light interaction you posit:

$$ \mathcal{L}_{int} \propto M^{\mu\nu} F_{\mu\nu} = T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta} F_{\alpha\beta} F_{\mu\nu} $$

for flat space (or no-medium) $ T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta} = g^{\mu\nu}g^{\alpha\beta} $, this term reduces to $ F^{\mu\nu} F_{\mu\nu}$ which is nothing more than the Maxwell term ! On the face of it this gives us nothing new, unless we adopt the route outlined above and use the metric $g_{\mu\nu}$ to encode the optical properties of the medium.

Another line of thought which exploits this notion of the metric to allow one to speak of an analogy between optical processes and the big-bang is the phenomenal work of Igor Smolyaninov [3]. This paper was accepted by PRL btw, so its nothing to sneeze at.

Assuming that the above line of reasoning is not fatally flawed, and that one can encode the effects of the medium in the metric, it seems that either the Maxwell or the Born-Infeld action are perfectly good candidates of gauge-invariant actions for your purposes.

                                Cheers,

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Edit: Non-linearity redux

As @Raskolnikov pointed out, the identification of the components $g_{ab}$ with the optical susceptibilities of a material, does not give us a nonlinear material. For that, you have to have a dependence of the susceptibilities on the field strengths themselves. So you have a feedback mechanism $ \mathbf{g} \rightarrow \mathbf{F} \rightarrow \mathbf{g} $ and therefore the non-linearity ! Therefore in general, as @robert has been trying to convey to me without success, $\mathbf{g}$ should in general be a function of $\mathbf{F}$.

But then you start treading dangerously close to the speculation that somehow the eventual picture (for the fully non-linear case) might be somehow general relativistic. That is a very tempting idea, but I leave that for another time.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user user346

Comments

@space_cadet: I can see your point, I think it is a problem that the formulation of the question is not very clear. I will have to think about how to motivate the notation maybe by calculating an example as Raskolnikov was suggesting. I might be able for example to derive the Kerr effect with $T^{\mu\nu\alpha\beta} = \left( 1 + \lambda F^{\gamma\delta}F_{\gamma\delta} \right)\cdot g^{\mu\alpha}g^{\nu\beta}$.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@robert. See my edit. You, my friend, are onto something !

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user user346

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@space_cadet: Thanks for the further edit. I want to try to convey you from another perspective :) The field $F$ in the Standard model is intrinsically nonlinear by the non-Abelian character of the underlying group. Indeed, it can be interpreted as a curvature. But not as a curvature of spacetime, it is a curvature of the fibre-bundle. Spacetime is in this theory not changed at all, it is just a background Minkowski one and I surely see no reason to bend spacetime via nonlinear optical effects. Then, we have GR as you mentioned and everything is getting messi (FT not defined etc).

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@space_cadet: Just to add: Not I am, we are :) I asked some time ago if a community page can write a paper. If there is something in this question, it might be worth the try.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@space_cadet: Now with the explanations given by Willie I can finally see your point of using a rescaled metric $\tilde{g}$. Lets say we both were right but talking from a slightly different perspective ;) I will incorporate the idea into the question if I can put it in my own words. Greetings

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@space_cadet: This T that I explicitely gave in the question is just an example of how it would look like for the interaction with free space. Then we just have $T(F,F) = F\wedge \star F$ and we reconstruct the ordinary free-space lagrangian. If now $T$ depends on $F$ itself, the theory is intrinsically nonlinear. I hope my way of explaining is not too confusing.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@robert, i sort of follow you, but i don't know where you're going with this.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user user346

Answer 4

In a condensed matter field theory course, I learned the following: microscopically, the Lagrangian for the electromagnetic field looks like it is supposed to, coupling minimally to the particle coordinates.

$$ L = \sum_i\left( \frac m2 (p_i-\frac ec \mathbf A(r_i))^2 - e\Phi(r_i) + \dots \right) .$$

On a macroscopic level, however, after getting rid of all the individual particle degrees of freedom via the grand canonical ensemble, new behavior may emerge. Namely, the effective Lagrangian for the electromagnetic field in the body may look very different from a linear one. For example, the effective action for the e.m. field in a superconductor is

$$ S_{\text{eff}}[\mathbf A] = \frac\beta2 \int d^3r \mathbf A^\perp(r) \left(-\frac 1{\mu_0}\nabla^2 + \frac {n_s}m \right)\mathbf A^\perp(r)$$

where $\mu_0$ is the vacuum permeability, $n_s$ the superfluid density, $m$ the electron mass and $\mathbf A^\perp$ is the perpendicular component of the gauge field, defined in Fourier space as $\mathbf A^\perp(q) = \mathbf A(q) - q(q\cdot \mathbf A(q))/q^2$. The difference to the vacuum action is the additional "mass term" $n_s/m$, which causes the Meissner effect.

I suppose that you are asking for the most general form that such effective actions may have? I don't have an answer, but I don't see why a most general form should actually exist in the first place.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Greg Graviton

Comments

Hi @greg, that is not what the question is asking. Their is no requirement for the non-linear theory in question to be an effective theory. Also there are "general forms" for effective actions. Many different microscopic model hamiltonians could yield the same effective theory macroscopically - as long as the hamiltonians share the same symmetries. This property is known as universality. Also any action, effective or not, has to satisfy the basic requirements for gauge invariance (or invariance under canonical transformations). This limits the possible form of the action very effectively.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user user346

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@Greg Graviton: Thank you for your answer. May I ask you if there exists a script ot your course on the internet? I think getting my hands on the derivation of this macroscopical effective action, I may give the question a new direction.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@space_cadet: I think the answer is just fine. The problem is that my question is not very specific and just relies on a vague idea. I will actually have to spend more time on it which is atm unfortunately not so easy :)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter

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@space_cadet: I thought that Robert was asking about nonlinear optics in matter. The most general form is of course $L = f(\mathbf A,\Phi)$ with some arbitrary $f$ that is gauge invariant, but that's kinda pointless. But as you note, a more specialized classification of common effective theories according to the microscopic Hamiltionians and their symmetries would be a very good answer. Unfortunately, I'm not knowledgeable about that.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Greg Graviton

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@Robert: I'm afraid, there is no script available. However, the course followed the book by Altland, Simons very closely. The effective action I'm talking about is given in equation (6.39), chapter 6.4. Maybe you can download an electronic version from your university library or somewhere else. Be warned that I wouldn't have been able to understand (even a bit of) the book alone, having a course was necessary for me.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Greg Graviton

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@Greg: Thank you for the explicit reference. I will see if I can follow its lines :)

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2014-04-01 16:36 (UCT), posted by SE-user Robert Filter