Orbital optical activity in noncentrosymmetric metals and superconductors

Abstract

We present the optical activity induced by the orbital magnetic moment in metals and superconductors using Green's function formalization. We show that an apparent singularity of the optical activity vanishes in the normal state; however, it remains finite in the superconducting state and is related to the superconducting Edelstein effect, ensuring the missing area measurement. Finally, we calculate the optical activity in a model Hamiltonian mimicking doped transition metal dichalcogenides to investigate its characteristic spectrum, and we analyze the Kerr effect to discuss a possibility to observe the optical activity in experiments.