Photonic orbital angular momentum in starlight

Detection of orbital angular momentum using a photonic integrated circuit

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) state of photons offer an attractive additional degree of freedom that has found a variety of applications. Measurement of OAM state, which is a critical task of these applications, demands photonic integrated devices for improved fidelity, miniaturization, and reconfiguration. Here we report the design of a silicon-integrated OAM receiver that is capable of detec...

Generating Optical Orbital Angular Momentum with Silicon Photonic Circuits

Optical orbital angular momentum.

We present a brief introduction to the orbital angular momentum of light, the subject of our theme issue and, in particular, to the developments in the 13 years following the founding paper by Allen et al. (Allen et al. 1992 Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185)). The papers by our invited authors serve to bring the field up to date and suggest where developments may take us next...

Photon Orbital Angular Momentum in Astrophysics

Astronomical observations of the orbital angular momentum of photons, a property of electromagnetic radiation that has come to the fore in recent years, have apparently never been attempted. Here, I show how measurements of this property of photons have a number of astrophysical applications. Subject headings: Instrumentation: Miscellaneous – Masers – ISM: General – Extraterrestrial Intelligenc...

Orbital Angular Momentum in Chiral Quark Model

We developed a new and unified scheme for describing both quark spin and orbital angular momenta in symmetry-breaking chiral quark model. The loss of quark spin in the chiral splitting processes is compensated by the gain of the orbital angular momentum carried by quarks and antiquarks. The sum of both spin and orbital angular momenta carried by quarks and antiquarks is 1/2. The analytic and nu...