Magnetic quadrupole dichroism in isotropic medium

Abstract

For an isotropic medium, a magnetic field applied in the Voigt geometry affects the optical properties in the second order only, so its effect is much weaker than in the Faraday geometry. In this work, we show that, under resonant excitation well beyond the linear regime, the situation changes drastically: A small magnetic linear anisotropy considerably increases, and an even stronger new quadrupole dichroism emerges. The latter manifests itself as 90{\deg}-periodic azimuthal dependence of transmission and anisotropic rotation of the probe polarization plane. These effects are described microscopically in a toy model and their symmetry analysis is presented. Both are observed experimentally on the D2 resonance of cesium vapor and agree with the theoretical predictions. The large magnitude of the quadrupole dichroism makes it promising for magnetometric applications and for studying the effects of anisotropic bleaching.