On the dragging of light by a rotating medium

Abstract

When light is passing through a rotating medium the optical polarisation is rotated. Recently it has been reasoned that this rotation applies also to the transmitted image (Padgett et al. 2006). We examine these two phenomena by extending an analysis of Player (1976) to general electromagnetic fields. We find that in this more general case the wave equation inside the rotating medium has to be amended by a term which is connected to the orbital angular momentum of the light. We show that optical spin and orbital angular momentum account respectively for the rotation of the polarisation and the rotation of the transmitted image.