Reinterpreting the magnetoelectric coupling of polarizability tensors of infinite cylinders using symmetry: a simple TM/TE view

Abstract

Recently, Strickland et al retrieved dynamic polarizabilities of infinitely long wires at oblique incidence, reporting non-zero magnetoelectric coupling, seemingly defying existing theorems which forbid this in centrosymmetric scatterers. We reconcile this finding with existing symmetry restrictions on microscopic polarizabilities using a property of line dipoles. This motivates a reformulation of cylinder polarizability, yielding diagonal tensors that decompose the response into TM and TE contributions, simplifying subsequent treatment by homogenization theories. A transformation is derived between Strickland et al.'s formulation and our reformulation, allowing magnetoelectric coupling to be identified as the contrast between TM and TE responses, and enabling simple geometric insights into all its scaling and symmetry properties.