Effect of dissipation on the constitutive relations of bi-anisotropic media - the optical response

This paper discusses the restrictions that dissipation forces on the material parameters and responses of bi-anisotropic media. The treatment is a general time domain analysis where six-vector formalism is applied. Energy conditions set limitations on the optical response dyadics and dyadic susceptibility kernels of the material that have to be satisfied regardless the time dependence of the fields. This paper will treat in detail the resulting restrictions for the optical response of bi-anisotropic media. Examples are given for some special cases. Also uniqueness and equivalence aspects of constitutive relations in the time domain are discussed.