Refraction of light and conservation laws

Abstract

The refraction of light by dispersion-free dielectric media can be modeled using well-localized macroscopic wave packets, enabling a description in terms of pseudo-particles. This approach is often used in thought experiments to illustrate aspects of the Abraham-Minkowski debate. This work uses the particle picture to show at an elementary level how different types of momenta come into play, and how light refraction can be explained at the level of particles. A special exactly solvable microscopic model is used to illustrate the interplay and tension between microscopic physics and the conventional effective-medium Maxwell equations.