Quantum Formulation of Fractional Orbital Angular Momentum
Quantum Physics
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
The quantum theory of rotation angles (S. M. Barnett and D. T. Pegg, Phys. Rev. A, 41, 3427-3425 (1990)) is generalised to non-integer values of the orbital angular momentum. This requires the introduction of an additional parameter, the orientation of a phase discontinuity associated with fractional values of the orbital angular momentum. We apply our formalism to the propagation of light modes with fractional orbital angular momentum in the paraxial and non-paraxial regime.
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0611169,
title = {Quantum Formulation of Fractional Orbital Angular Momentum},
author = {J. B. Goette and S. Franke-Arnold and R. Zambrini and Stephen M. Barnett},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0611169},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
14 pages, 6 figure (figures are of low quality due to jpeg2ps conversion), submitted to J Mod Opt special issue for the Photon 06 conference