Birefringence phenomena revisited

The propagation of electromagnetic waves is investigated in the context of the isotropic and nonlinear dielectric media at rest in the eikonal limit of the geometrical optics. Taking into account the functional dependence $\varepsilon=\varepsilon(E,B)$ and $\mu=\mu(E,B)$ for the dielectric coefficients, a set of phenomena related to the birefringence of the electromagnetic waves induced by external fields are derived and discussed. Our results contemplate the known cases already reported in the literature: Kerr, Cotton-Mouton, Jones and magnetoelectric effects. Moreover, new effects are presented here as well as the perspectives of its experimental confirmations.