English

Conserving optical currents: angular momentum and spin

Optics 2010-03-23 v1

Abstract

Within the first quantisation of Maxwell's equations, we introduce the dynamic energy, linear momentum, angular momentum and optical spin of the electromagnetic fields. We show that these different quantities are conserved during the propagation of light in vacuum and are additive only for eigenmodes of the electromagnetic field.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1003.4019,
  title  = {Conserving optical currents: angular momentum and spin},
  author = {Michael Mazilu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4019},
  year   = {2010}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:00:26.301Z