Related papers: Rotating light, OAM paradox and relativistic compl…
Fundamental and applied concepts concerning the ability of light beams to carry a certain mechanical angular momentum with respect to the propagation axis are reviewed and discussed. Following issues are included: Historical reference;…
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…
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…
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light and optical vortices are closely related concepts that are often conflated. The conserved OAM arises fundamentally from the SO(3) rotational symmetry of spacetime, while the concept of vortices…
The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light is potentially interesting for astronomical study of rotating objects such as black holes, but the effect of reduced spatial coherence of astronomical light sources such as stars is largely…
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…
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…
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…
A matrix representation is introduced for stationary beam-like light fields that allows for simultaneous treatment of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) and the second-order state of spatial coherence. This Coherence-OAM matrix is a…
We consider the propagation of slow light with an orbital angular momentum (OAM) in a moving atomic medium. We have derived a general equation of motion and applied it in analysing propagation of slow light with an OAM in a rotating medium,…
We set forth a method to analyze the orbital angular momentum of a light field. Instead of using the canonical formalism for the conjugate pair angle-angular momentum, we model this latter variable by the superposition of two independent…
The transverse beam pattern, usually observed in experiment, is a result of averaging the optical-frequency oscillations of the electromagnetic field distributed over the beam cross section. An analytical criterion is derived that these…
We develop a general framework to analyze the two important and much discussed questions concerning (a) `orbital' and `spin' angular momentum carried by light and (b) the paraxial approximation of the free Maxwell system both in the…
The orbital angular momentum and radial momentum both describe the transverse momentum of a light field. Efficient discriminating and sorting the two kinds of momentum lies at the heart of further application. Here, we propose a…
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…
Interaction of spin and intrinsic orbital angular momentum of light is observed, as evidenced by length-dependent rotations of both spatial patterns and optical polarization in a cylindrically-symmetric isotropic optical fiber. Such…
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…
Within monochromatic optical fields, we demonstrate the rotating-wave structured light with wave vortex carrying an intrinsic transverse orbital angular momentum orthogonal to the propagation direction of light. Remarkably, we find that…
We compare three attempts that have been made to decompose the angular momentum of the electromagnetic field into components of an "orbital" and "spin" nature. All three expressions are different and it appears, on the basis of classical…
By means of the Helmholtz theorem on the decomposition of vector fields, the angular momentum of the classical electromagnetic field is decomposed, in a general and manifestly gauge invariant manner, into a spin component and an orbital…