We present a new unified covariant description of electromagnetic field properties for an arbitrary space-time. We derive a complete set of irreducible components describing a six-dimensional electromagnetic field from the Maxwell and metric tensors using the symmetry group SL(2,C). For the special case of a flat space-time metric the components are shown to correspond to the scalar invariants of the electromagnetic field, the energy-momentum-stress tensor and in addition, three new tensors expressing physical observables of rank two and four, respectively. We make a physical interpretation of one of the new rank two tensors as describing a classical intrinsic spin of the electromagnetic field.
Categories: physics.class-ph physics.optics