English

Physical Decomposition of Photon Angular Momentum

Quantum Physics 2014-07-23 v2 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We address the problem of angular momentum decomposition of a free photon. We propose a natural and physical scheme for separating the total angular momentum operator for a free photon into an orbital part and a spin part with the hope that it solves this long-standing problem and it could provide a natural basis for further study of the problem of angular momentum decomposition of a gauge field system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1407.2035,
  title  = {Physical Decomposition of Photon Angular Momentum},
  author = {Wei-Min Sun},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1407.2035},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

4 pages, LaTex2e, some minor changes and references added

R2 v1 2026-06-22T04:58:03.754Z