Saturday, January 4, 2014

What is Isotropy and anisotropy, what is anisotropic media, what is isotropic media

Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent, as opposed to isotropy, which implies identical properties in all directions. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physical or mechanical properties (absorbance, refractive index, conductivity, tensile strength, etc.) An example of anisotropy is the light coming through a polarizer.
Another example for anisotropy is wood, which is easier to split along its grain than against it.

Typical transparent media such as glasses are isotropic, which means that light behaves the same way no matter which direction it is travelling in the medium.
 \mathbf{D} = \varepsilon_0  \mathbf{E} + \mathbf{P}

In an isotropic and linear medium, this polarisation field P is proportional to and parallel to the electric field E:
 \mathbf{P}  = \chi \varepsilon_0 \mathbf{E}



Share:

0 comments:

Post a Comment