Quantum numbers and spectra of structured light
Optics
2018-09-26 v2
Abstract
It is shown that the description of light beams in terms of the corresponding photon quantum numbers elucidates the properties of these beams. In particular, this description shows that the helicity quantum number plays the fundamental role. This mode of description is applied to twisted and knotted electromagnetic waves. We concentrate on the cases where photon wave functions are eigenfunctions of one component of angular momentum. We discovered that for knotted waves the eigenvalue of the angular momentum determines the topology of knots.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1805.00678,
title = {Quantum numbers and spectra of structured light},
author = {Iwo Bialynicki-Birula and Zofia Bialynicka-Birula},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.00678},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
Submitted to the special issue of Physica Scripta in honor of Wolfgang Schleich