Energy and momentum of light in dielectric media.
The conservation of energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum of the electromagnetic field in linear dielectric media with arbitrary dispersion and absorption is studied in the framework of an auxiliary field approach in which the electric and magnetic fields are complemented by a material field. This material field depends on a continuous variable omega, and describes harmonic motions of the charges with eigen frequency omega. It carries an electric dipole moment and couples as such to the electric field. The equations of motion of the model are equivalent to Maxwell's equations in an arbitrary dispersive and absorbing dielectric and imply that several quantities are conserved. These quantities may be interpreted as the energy, momentum, and angular momentum of the total system, and can be viewed as the sum of the corresponding quantities of the field and matter subsystems. The total momentum turns out to be equal to the Minkowski momentum plus a dispersive contribution. The total energy and total momentum of a wave packet both travel with the group velocity, while the ratio of total momentum and total energy is given by the phase velocity.
Stallinga
Sjoerd
S
Philips Research Laboratories, Professor Holstlaan 4, 5611 AA Eindhoven, The Netherlands. sjoerd.stallinga@philips.com