Related papers: Paraxial Light Beams with Angular Momentum
This paper is devoted to study the propagation of light beams carrying orbital angular momentum in optically anisotropic media. We first review some properties of homogeneous anisotropic media, and describe how the paraxial formalism is…
A circularly polarized rotationally symmetric paraxial laser beams carries hbar angular momentum per photon as spin. Focussing the beam with a rotationally symmetric lens cannot change this angular momentum flux, yet the focussed beam must…
Recent developments in the understanding of optical angular momentum have resulted in many demonstrations of unusual optical phenomena, such as optical beams with orbital angular momentum and transverse spinning light. Here we detail novel…
It is shown that the momentum density of free electromagnetic field splits into two parts. One has no contribution to the net momentum due to the transversality condition. The other yields all the momentum. The angular momentum that is…
We review basic physics and novel types of optical angular momentum. We start with a theoretical overview of momentum and angular momentum properties of generic optical fields, and discuss methods for their experimental measurements. In…
Traditionally, the angular momentum of light is calculated for "bullet-like" electromagnetic wave packets, although in actual optical experiments "pencil-like" beams of light are more commonly used. The fact that a wave packet is bounded…
For over three decades, the study of optical vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) has been at the forefront of optics, driven by fundamental questions about optical momentum as well as diverse applications in quantum…
We develop the quantum theory of transverse angular momentum of light beams. The theory applies to paraxial and quasi-paraxial photon beams in vacuum, and reproduces the known results for classical beams when applied to coherent states of…
The expression for the total angular momentum carried by a laser optical vortex beam, splits, in the paraxial approximation, into two terms which seem to represent orbital and spin angular momentum respectively. There are, however, two very…
Spin angular momentum, an elementary dynamical property of classical electromagnetic fields, plays an important role in spin-orbit and light-matter interactions, especially in near-field optics. The research on optical spins has led to the…
This paper analyzes the algebraic and physical properties of the spin and orbital angular momenta of light in the quantum mechanical framework. The consequences of the fact that these are not angular momenta in the quantum mechanical sense…
Recent studies show that the angular momentum, both spin and orbital, of rotating light beams possesses counter-intuitive characteristics. We present a new approach to the question of orbital angular momentum of light based on the complex…
For paraxial and non-paraxial light, numerous measures of electromagnetic attribute are expressible in terms of photon annihilation and creation. Accordingly, energy, angular momentum and chirality measures acquire a consistent…
We investigate how the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a paraxial light beam is affected upon reflection at a planar interface. Theoretically, the unavoidable angular spread of the (paraxial) beam leads to OAM sidebands which are found to…
New forms of electron beams have been intensively investigated recently, including vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum, as well as Airy beams propagating along a parabolic trajectory. Their traits may be harnessed for…
We provide a vivid demonstration of the mechanical effect of transverse spin momentum in an optical beam in free space. This component of the Poynting momentum was previously thought to be virtual, and unmeasurable. Here, its effect is…
Light beams can carry a discrete, in principle unbounded amount of angular momentum. Examples of such beams, the Laguerre-Gauss modes, are frequently expressed as solutions of the paraxial wave equation. There, they are eigenstates of the…
When light is transmitted through optically inhomogeneous and anisotropic media the spatial distribution of light can be modified according to its input polarization state. A complete analysis of this process, based on the paraxial…
The concept of angular momentum is ubiquitous to many areas of physics. In classical mechanics, a system may possess an angular momentum which can be either transverse (e.g., in a spinning wheel) or longitudinal (e.g., for a fluidic vortex)…
Light beams carrying orbital angular momentum, such as Laguerre-Gaussian beams, give rise to the violation of the standard dipolar selection rules during the interaction with matter yielding, in general, an exchange of angular momentum…