Uncertainty principle for angular position and angular momentum

Fourier relationship between angular position and optical orbital angular momentum.

We demonstrate the Fourier relationship between angular position and angular momentum for a light mode. In particular we measure the distribution of orbital angular momentum states of light that has passed through an aperture and verify that the orbital angular momentum distribution is given by the complex Fourier-transform of the aperture function. We use spatial light modulators, configured a...

Large-uncertainty intelligent states for angular momentum and angle

The equality in the uncertainty principle for linear momentum and position is obtained for states which also minimize the uncertainty product. However, in the uncertainty relation for angular momentum and angular position both sides of the inequality are state dependent and therefore the intelligent states, which satisfy the equality, do not necessarily give a minimum for the uncertainty produc...

Angular Momentum

Rotations and Angular Momentum

2 Exercise. Prove it. ◦ In fact, as sophisticates can show you, on a complex space a linear operator which preserves all norms will also preserve all inner products. But the key thing is to remember is that a unitary operator preserves all inner products (and therefore all norms). • This is analogous to the fact that translations and rotations in ordinary three-dimensional space preserve distan...

Rotation and Angular Momentum

There is a fundamental connection between the angular momentum (a mechanical quantity) and the rotation operators (which is a symmetry group). The angular momentum is the generator of rotations. Because of this connection, many properties of angular momentum operators can be derived from the properties of the rotation group. We will derive these properties (mainly the commutation relations) sta...