Conical refraction in generalized biaxial media: A geometric algebra approach

Abstract

It is well-know that conical refraction occurs for electric anisotropic biaxial crystals when the wave vector has the direction of the medium optic axes. In this paper, we show that conical refraction occurs in an analogous away for a more general type of biaxial media that have simultaneously electric and magnetic anisotropies. Furthermore, the new coordinate-free approach based on geometric algebra, developed by the authors in previous papers to address anisotropy, is shown to shed new light on this classic topic of optics that is conical refraction.