Abstract
What can we learn about the internal microstructure of an optical medium from macroscopic optical measurements? As is known, the microscopic symmetric properties of crystals manifest themselves in an anisotropy of the refractive index. Whereas the internal structure of the radiators exhibits itself by means of the multipolar expansion, neither the radiators’ size nor the lattice-grain size ever enters into formulas for the refractive index n of the medium. Such an approach usually is well grounded because of the smallness of these sizes compared to the wavelength λ. According to the classical Lorentz–Lorenz (LL) formula, optical properties of the medium depend merely on the product of the density N and the polarizability α of an isolated radiator. This holds true for dense, Nλ3 ≫ 1, media only. Incorporated into the LL formula, local-field effects raise from interparticle interactions, and in this sense they reveal the very fact of the medium’s discreteness, but not its magnitude. For a resonant gas, local-field corrections may be essential, even for a rarefied medium, when Nλ3 ≤ 1, and medium discreteness in wavelength units becomes evident.
© 1995 Optical Society of America
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