The propagation of a polarized gaussian beam in a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium

In the frame of the eikonal-based complex geometrical optics, which describes the phase front and cross section of a light beam using the quadratic expansion of a complex-valued eikonal, we investigate the transverse deflections of a polarized Gaussian beam (GB) in a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium, which is called the spin Hall effect of the beam. The linear complex-valued eikonal terms are introduced firstly to describe the polarization-dependent transverse shifts of the beam in the inhomogeneous medium. We find that the polarization-dependent transverse shifts of the beams include two parts: one originates from the coupling between the spin angular momentum and the extrinsic orbital angular momentum due to the curve trajectory of the center of gravity of the polarized GB, and the other from the coupling between the spin angular momentum and the intrinsic orbital angular momentum due to the rotation of the beam with respect to the central ray.