Optical activity tensor for radiating atomic and molecular systems

Abstract

The optical activity tensor (OAT) is explicitly derived. It is shown that to evaluate a large number of effects related to optical activity of some atomic/molecular system at arbitrary frequency $\omega$ of the incident light, one needs to know only four optical activity tensors which have twelve irreducible (tensor) components. An additional amplification factor contains one $3 \times 3$ tensor of light scattering with three irreducible components. The explicit dependence of all irreducible components of OAT upon $\omega$ and some molecular parameters is derived and discussed. We apply OAT to explain the dispersion of optical rotation in dilute solutions of organic molecules. This study opens a new avenue in application of methods of modern Quantum Electrodynamics to the optical activity.