The conditions in terms of the susceptibilities may be directly deduced from the Poynting theorem. As shown in Section 2.5, a medium is gainless and lossless if Eq. (2.76) is zero for any field value, which implies that
(2.77)
Since these conditions are similar to the reciprocity conditions (2.51), it is interesting to see under which circumstances a medium satisfies (2.77) while being either reciprocal or nonreciprocal. For this purpose, Table 2.2 compares the different possible cases.
This table reveals that a gainless, lossless, and reciprocal medium has purely real electric and magnetic susceptibility tensors and purely imaginary magnetoelectric susceptibilities. Interestingly, we also see that it is possible for a medium to be gainless, lossless, and nonreciprocal.
We now express the corresponding relationships in terms of scattering parameters. For this purpose, consider a uniform bianisotropic slab sandwiched between two different media and illuminated by the normally incident waves
The
(2.78)
Table 2.2 Conditions for a medium to be gainless and lossless in addition to being either reciprocal or nonreciprocal.
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Reciprocal |
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Nonreciprocal |
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Figure 2.4 Normal scattering by a bianisotropic slab sandwiched between two media.
Since the slab is gainless and lossless, conservation of power requires that the scattered power equals the incident power, i.e.