English

Spin-Orbit Coupling and the Evolution of Transverse Spin

Optics 2019-12-11 v1

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of transverse spin in tightly focused circularly polarized beams of light, where spin-orbit coupling causes a local rotation of the polarization ellipses upon propagation through the focal volume. The effect can be explained as a relative Gouy-phase shift between the circularly polarized transverse field and the longitudinal field carrying orbital angular momentum. The corresponding rotation of the electric transverse spin density is observed experimentally by utilizing a recently developed reconstruction scheme, which relies on transverse-spin-dependent directional scattering of a nano-probe.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.12539,
  title  = {Spin-Orbit Coupling and the Evolution of Transverse Spin},
  author = {Jörg S. Eismann and Peter Banzer and Martin Neugebauer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.12539},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

4 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:31:52.721Z