Signature of inertia on light dragging in rotating plasmas

Abstract

The signature of light dragging in a rotating unmagnetized plasma is studied analytically. In contrast with previous work which focused exclusively on the drag effects arising from rigid rotation, we examine here the supplemental contribution of inertia to the rest-frame dielectric properties of a rotating medium. We reveal, for the first time, that these so far neglected contributions actually play a dominant role on light dragging in rotating unmagnetized plasmas. Besides birefringence and enhanced polarization drag, inertia is notably demonstrated to be the cause of a non-zero drag, pointing to fundamental differences between linear and angular momentum coupling. We finally discuss how, thanks to the more favourable scaling elicited here, it may be possible to observe these effects in recently proposed laser driven rotating plasmas, identifying new promising directions for experimental investigations.