Optically induced circular and axial birefringences in achiral fluids: an ab initio study of the optical Faraday effect

A computational analysis of the effects (intensity-dependent change in the refractive index and the optical Faraday effect, OFE) induced in an achiral fluid by circularly polarized, linearly polarized or unpolarized light is presented. The connection between the molecular parameters appearing in the expression of the observable, as derived by Woz´ niak in the 1990s, and the appropriate linear and cubic frequency dependent response functions is made for the general case of both chiral and non-chiral fluid. The parameters which are non-vanishing in the case of achiral systems are then computed employing a coupled cluster singles and doubles wave function model and a wide choice of correlation consistent basis sets, for a set of reference systems, including a rare gas (neon), a non-dipolar (N2) and a dipolar (CO) molecule. Contributions due to magnetic and quadrupolar interactions between the fields and the gases are neglected, since they are in principle of much less importance than the purely electric dipolar interactions. Nevertheless a rough estimate of their size is given. The aim of the study is to assess the detectability of OFE. To this end, the ab initio results are compared with those obtained in this work for the closely related optical Kerr effect (OKE) and with those yielded by the classical Faraday effect.