Related papers: Molecular chirality and the orbital angular moment…
Helicity $H$, chirality $C$, and spin angular momentum $\mathbf{S}$ are three physical observables that play an important role in the study of optical fields. These quantities are closely related, but their connection is hidden by the use…
We consider optical properties of a gas of molecules that are brought to fast unidirectional spinning by a pulsed laser field. It is shown that a circularly polarized probe light passing through the medium inverts its polarization…
Light is one of the most powerful and precise tools allowing us to control, shape and create new phases of matter. In this task, the magnetic component of a light wave has so far played a unique role in defining the wave's helicity, but its…
Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of photons, as a new fundamental degree of freedom, has excited a great diversity of interest, because of a variety of emerging applications. Arbitrarily tunable OAM has gained much attention, but its creation…
We consider propagation of a paraxial beam carrying the spin angular momentum (polarization) and intrinsic orbital angular momentum (IOAM) in a smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium. It is shown that the presence of IOAM can dramatically…
Valley, as a degree of freedom, has been exploited to realize valley-selective Hall transport and circular dichroism in two-dimensional layered materials. On the other hand, orbital angular momentum of light with helical phase distribution…
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…
Photons carrying non-zero orbital angular momentum (twisted photons) are well-known in optics. Recently, it was suggested to use Compton backscattering to boost optical twisted photons to high energies. Twisted electrons in the intermediate…
We study the light scattering by localized quasi planar excitations of a Cholesteric Liquid Crystal known as spherulites. Due to the anisotropic optical properties of the medium and the peculiar shape of the excitations, we quantitatively…
Intense laser ionization expands Einstein's photoelectric effect rules giving a wealth of phenomena widely studied over the last decades. In all cases, so far, photons were assumed to carry one unit of angular momentum. However it is now…
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…
A new physical mechanism to achieve spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion based on the interaction of an intense circularly polarized (CP) laser beam with a plane foil is presented and studied for the first time. It has been verified…
When structured light is propagated through the atmosphere, turbulence results in modal scattering and distortions. An extensively studied example is that of light carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), where the atmosphere is treated as…
It has been known for a century that electromagnetic fields can transport not only energy and linear momentum but also angular momentum. However, it was not until twenty years ago, with the discovery in laser optics of experimental…
Following the very recent experimental realisation of electron vortices, we consider their interaction with matter, in particular the transfer of orbital angular momentum in the context of electron energy loss spectroscopy, and the recently…
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)…
It is shown that electromagnetic vortices can act as beam guides for charged particles. The confinement in the transverse directions is due to the rotation of the electric and magnetic fields around the vortex line. Large class of exact…
The chirality and helicity of linearly polarised Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams are examined. Such a type of light possesses a substantial longitudinal field when its beam waist is sufficiently small and so gives rise to non-zero chirality…
Breaking the diffraction limit and focusing laser beams to subwavelength scale are becoming possible with the help of recent developments in plasmonics. Such subwavelength focusing bridges different length scales of laser beams and matter.…
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 spin state can occur in homogeneous and…