Chiral magnetic effect of light

Abstract

We study a photonic analog of the chiral magnetic (vortical) effect. We discuss that the vector component of magnetoelectric tensors plays a role of "vector potential," and its rotation is understood as "magnetic field" of a light. Using the geometrical optics approximation, we show that "magnetic fields" cause an anomalous shift of a wave packet of a light through an interplay with the Berry curvature of photons. The mechanism is the same as that of the chiral magnetic (vortical) effect of a chiral fermion, so that we term the anomalous shift "chiral magnetic effect of a light." We further study the chiral magnetic effect of a light beyond geometric optics by directly solving the transmission problem of a wave packet at a surface of a magnetoelectric material. We show that the experimental signal of the chiral magnetic effect of a light is the nonvanishing of transverse displacements for the beam normally incident to a magnetoelectric material.