Related papers: Spin and Orbital Angular Momenta of Light Reflecte…
According to the conservation of angular momentum, when a plane-wave polarized photon splits into a pair of electron-positron under the influence of the Coulomb field, the spin angular momentum (SAM) of the photon is converted into the…
We derive exact expressions, in the form of Fourier integrals over the (k,w) domain, for the energy, momentum, and angular momentum of a light pulse propagating in free space. The angular momentum is seen to split naturally into two parts.…
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…
We present a unified theoretical framework for the transfer of angular momentum from a Bessel wave of twisted light to a fully absorbing disk of finite radius. Exact expressions for the orbital angular momentum density and the total angular…
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…
It is well known that spin angular momentum of light, and therefore that of photons, is directly related to their circular polarization. Naturally, for totally unpolarized light, polarization is undefined and the spin vanishes. However, for…
We describe a novel phenomenon occurring when a polarized Gaussian beam of light is observed in a Cartesian reference frame whose axes are not parallel to the direction of propagation of the beam. Such phenomenon amounts to an intriguing…
Light beam with optical vortices can propagate in free space only with integer orbital angular momentum. Here, we invert this scientific consensus theoretically and experimentally by proposing light beams carrying natural non-integer…
Twisted light is light carrying orbital angular momentum. The profile of such a beam is a ring-like structure with a node at the beam axis, where a phase singularity exits. Due to the strong spatial inhomogeneity the mathematical…
The spin angular momentum in an elliptically polarized beam of light plays several noteworthy roles in optical traps. It contributes to the linear momentum density in a non-uniform beam, and thus to the radiation pressure exerted on…
As one fundamental property of light, the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photon has elicited widespread interest. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that the OAM conversion of light without any spin state can occur in homogeneous and…
Free electrons moving in an optical standing wave field feel the ponderomotive potential, acting as a refractive-index medium in electron optics. Emerging technologies involving this potential have been proposed and realized in electron…
For light, its spin can be independent of the spatial distribution of its wave function, whereas its intrinsic orbital angular momentum does depend on this distribution. This difference suggests that the spin Hall effect might differ from…
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…
Angular momenta of electromagnetic waves are important both in concepts and applications. In this work, we systematically discuss two types of angular momenta, i.e., spin angular momentum and orbital angular momentum in various cases, e.g.,…
In a recent paper, Mansuripur et al. [Phys. Rev. A 84, 033813 (2011)] indicated and numerically verified the generation of the helical wavefront of optical beams using a conical-shape reflector. Because the optical reflection is largely…
The nature of intrinsic/extrinsic character of angular momentum is defined in terms of the kind of the associated rotational energy of the light. The salient features of the spin energy of light and photon are highlighted. Spin angular…
We theoretically investigate the effect of inhomogeneous light beams with (twisted light) and without (plane-wave light) orbital angular momentum on semiconductor-based nanostructures, when the symmetry axes of the beam and the…
We demonstrate that the optical response of twisted photonic bilayers, photonic counterparts of van der Waals structures, is sensitive to both spin angular momentum (SAM) and orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light. A beam of unpolarized…
The partial reflection of an electromagnetic (EM) wave from a medium leads to absorption of momentum in the direction perpendicular to the surface (the standard radiation pressure) {and, for oblique incidence on a partially reflecting…