Miles Padgett, Johannes Courtial, and Les Allen have written an interesting review of the angular momentum properties of light (Physics Today, May 2004, page 35). In it, they note that if the spin and orbital components of a circularly polarized and helically phased beam add together to give a nonzero total angular momentum, the resulting beam can act as an optical wrench and cause a transparent particle (they must have meant a partially absorbing particle) to rotate. The authors state that no rotation results if the spin and orbital components cancel each other. Note that in the latter case, if one examines the transverse components of the Poynting vector or linear momentum across the doughnut beam profile, one finds that these vectors are still present but point in one annular direction on the inner side and in the opposite annular direction on the outer side of the annular intensity profile. Thus they cancel out in total. I suppose this phenomenon might be thought of as a way to create optical shear and perhaps could even be used as an optical hole cutter, hydraulic stirrer, or bottle-cap remover.
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January 01 2005
A Fine Point on Light’s Angular Momentum
Anthony Siegman
Anthony Siegman
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Physics Today 58 (1), 16–17 (2005);
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Anthony Siegman; A Fine Point on Light’s Angular Momentum. Physics Today 1 January 2005; 58 (1): 16–17. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1881881
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