Most physicists know that polarized light is associated with the spin angular momentum of the photon. It is almost certainly true that the idea of orbital angular momentum is a good deal less understood. Perhaps the simplest and most obvious display of both the spin and orbital angular momentum of light beams comes from an examination of the ratio of their angular momentum to their energy. For ...

Relations between two definitions of (total) angular momentum operator, as a generator of rotations and in the Lagrangian formalism, are explored in quantum field theory. Generally, these definitions result in different angular momentum operators, which are suitable for different purposes in the theory. From the spin and orbital angular momentum operators (in the Lagrangian formalism) are extra...

The physics of angular momentum in even space dimensions can be surprisingly counter-intuitive. Three such suprises, all associated with the properties of supersymmetric rotating objects, are examined: (i) 5D black holes, (ii) Dyonic instantons and (iii) Supertubes. ∗ To appear in proceedings of TH-2002, The International Conference on Theoretical Physics, Paris, UNESCO, July 2002.

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...

This study shows that by using a wedge plate the incident direction of light propagation can be rotated as desired while still preserving beam polarization. This study also deduces the basic condition of this preservation of polarization. Two typical wedge plates are analyzed for numerical demonstration. Simulation results verify that a collimated beam with a +45 degrees linear polarization can...

In all already performed (E89-009, E94-107, E01-011) or approved (E05-015) Jlab hypernuclear electroproduction experiments the K mesons are detected at very small (few degrees) laboratory scattering angels (measured with respect to virtual photon momentum). This region of kaon scattering angles is not covered, unfortunately, by recent photoand electro-production data on the elementary productio...

There is considerable interest in the structural and functional properties of the angular gyrus (AG). Located in the posterior part of the inferior parietal lobule, the AG has been shown in numerous meta-analysis reviews to be consistently activated in a variety of tasks. This review discusses the involvement of the AG in semantic processing, word reading and comprehension, number processing, d...