Backscattered polarization patterns, optical vortices, and the angular momentum of light

We demonstrate that the polarization patterns observed in backscattering of linearly polarized light are a manifestation of the conservation of angular momentum of light. We will show that this phenomenon can be described in terms of phase vortices that are acquired by the right and left circularly polarized components. The helicity and orbital angular momentum of these components satisfy the requirement for conservation of angular momentum.     

Director sliding induced by a circularly polarised light in dye-doped liquid crystals

We report the first detailed experimental study of the transient effects of a circularly polarised beam on dye-doped liquid crystal cells. Experiments show that, as linearly polarized light does, light with circular polarization induces quasi-free sliding of the molecular director on the irradiated surface. The behaviour of the sliding angle vs. the incident intensity, its dependence on the exposure time and its independence on the sign of the light ellipticity, suggest that the phenomenon is connected to surface effects instead of being directly due to the transfer of intrinsic angular momentum from light to the LC molecules.     

Canonical momentum,angular momentum,and helicity of circularly polarized Airy beams

We report a study of the momentum, angular momentum, and helicity of circularly polarized Airy beams propagating in free space. By using the vector angular spectrum representation, the explicit analytical expressions for the electric and magnetic field components of circularly polarized Airy beams are derived in detail. To overcome the drawbacks of classical kinematics formulae when applied to structured light beams, a general canonical approach is introduced to describe the momentum, angular momentum and helicity of Airy beams. Numerical simulation results for the spatial distributions of the canonical momentum, spin and orbital angular momentum, as well as the helicity densities are presented and discussed. This study may provide useful insights into the dynamical properties of Airy beams that may be important in several applications, including the optical control, micromanipulation, and information processing.     

光子角动量在环形金属纳米孔异常透射过程中的作用

在环形凹槽包围环形金属纳米孔的异常透射器件的研究中,环形凹槽可以将携带光子角动量的入射光转化为涡旋表面等离极化激元,这些涡旋表面等离极化激元传向几何中心并与直接照射在环形纳米孔上的光子发生干涉,当相互干涉的光子满足相位匹配条件时,环形纳米孔的透射率得到显著增强.本文利用理论分析和数值计算的方法研究了光子角动量和凹槽半径对环形纳米孔透射过程的影响.我们发现调节环形凹槽的半径和入射光携带的光子角动量可以调节光子在金膜上表面传输时的径向传播相位,进而影响了环形纳米孔附近的干涉电场强度,最终决定了环形纳米孔的透射率,进而可以通过调节凹槽的半径来调节携带不同光子角动量的光束在环形纳米孔的透射率.本文的研究结果对基于涡旋表面等离极化激元的异常透射器件的设计具有重要的指导意义.     

Giant wave-drag enhancement of friction in sliding carbon nanotubes

Molecular dynamics simulations of coaxial carbon nanotubes in relative sliding motion reveal a striking enhancement of friction when phonons whose group velocity is close to the sliding velocity of the nanotubes are strongly excited. The effect is analogous to the dramatic increase in air drag experienced by aircraft flying close to the speed of sound but differs in that it can occur in multiple velocity ranges with varying magnitude, depending on the atomic level structures of the nanotubes. The phenomenon is a general one that may occur in other nanoscale mechanical systems.     

Properties of hot residual nuclei produced in pA reactions

The predictions for the production of nuclides and particles in proton-induced reactions are important e.g. for the detailed design of spallation neutron sources or accelerator-driven-systems. Computational tools are required that are able to describe quantitatively the two-stage process i.e. intra-nuclear cascade followed by evaporation-fission. The first stage is a highly non-equilibrated process in which incoming proton deposits in hot residual nucleus both excitation energy and angular momentum. The CBUU transport model calculation for few targets, for the proton energy range 0.4-2.0 GeV are presented, with the idea to find global parametrizations for the distributions of charge, mass, excitation energy, angular momentum of hot residual nuclei.Received: 30 September 2002, Published online: 22 October 2003PACS: 24.10.-i Nuclear reaction models and methods - 24.10.Lx Monte Carlo simulations (including hadron and parton cascades and string breaking models)     

Adjustable plasmon resonance in the coaxial gold nanotubes

We propose the coaxial gold nanotubes for their transmission and plasmon resonances theoretically. We find that the transmission spectra are highly adjustable by tuning the thickness of the nanotubes, the separation and the dielectric constant between the inner and outer nanotubes. The resonance peaks close to the left forbidden band gap edge are strongly correlated with the dielectric constant, the inner and outer tube thickness, and the separation between the two tubes. Based on the localized nature of the electric field distributions, we show that local plasmon resonance modes result from hybridized resonances of multifold multipolar plasmon polaritons in the cross section of the coaxial nanotubes.     

Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in inhomogeneous anisotropic media

We demonstrate experimentally an optical process in which the spin angular momentum carried by a circularly polarized light beam is converted into orbital angular momentum, leading to the generation of helical modes with a wave-front helicity controlled by the input polarization. This phenomenon requires the interaction of light with matter that is both optically inhomogeneous and anisotropic. The underlying physics is also associated with the so-called Pancharatnam-Berry geometrical phases involved in any inhomogeneous transformation of the optical polarization.     

Optical magnus effect as a consequence of Berry phase anisotropy

Presented in this work is a modified geometric optics of smoothly inhomogeneous isotropic medium, which takes into account weak anisotropy introduced by inhomogeneity. Pointed out is the common nature of two fundamental phenomena: Berry’s geometrical phase and the optical Magnus effect, that is, propagation of rays of right and left circular polarization along different trajectories. Shown is that the former phenomenon can be explained by the difference in phase velocity of waves of right-hand and left-hand polarizations, while the latter one is the result of the difference in their group velocity. This work demonstrates that the optical Magnus effect is quite a topological effect that exclusively depends on the geometry of the system’s contour in the momentum space. We predict the effect of the splitting of a ray of mixed polarization into two circularly polarized rays and propose a scheme for the experimental observation of this phenomenon.     

声子角动量与手性声子

在经典的物理学理论中,声子广泛地被认为是线极化的、不具有角动量的.最近的理论研究发现,在具有自旋声子相互作用的磁性体系(时间反演对称性破缺)中,声子可以携带非零的角动量,在零温时声子除了具有零点能以外还带有零点角动量;非零的声子角动量将会修正通过爱因斯坦-德哈斯效应测量的回磁比.在非磁性材料中,总的声子角动量为零,但是在空间反演对称性破缺的六角晶格体系中,其倒格子空间的高对称点上声子具有角动量,并具有确定的手性;三重旋转对称操作给予声子量子化的赝角动量,赝角动量的守恒将决定电子谷间散射的选择定则;此外还理论预测了谷声子霍尔效应.     

Multistability of the optical response in a system of quasi-two-dimensional exciton polaritons

The nonlinear dynamic properties of a system of polaritons in a planar semiconductor microcavity under conditions of external coherent photoexcitation have been investigated. It has been shown that the interaction between polaritons with identical projections of the total angular momentum (J _z ) can give rise to multistability of the response of the excited polariton state. As a result, nonequilibrium transitions between different stability branches become possible due to fluctuations or arbitrarily smooth variations of the excitation parameters and occur with abrupt changes in the intensity and optical polarization of the field in the microcavity. It has been demonstrated that a relatively weak attraction between polaritons with opposite total angular momenta J _z leads to a possibility of spontaneously breaking the symmetry of circularly polarized field components in the microcavity under strictly linear (symmetric) polarization conditions of external excitation.     

Decays of excited baryons in DTU

Properties of the decays of excited strange baryons into ground state baryon and pseudoscalar meson are examined in the framework of the linear baryonic string model. The agreement between the predictions and the data is good. The single model's parameter ε, the deviation of which from 1 measuresSU (3) breaking, is found to decrease with increasing internal orbital angular momentum of a baryon.     

Electric-field-induced symmetry breaking of angular momentum distribution in atoms

We report the experimental observation of alignment to orientation conversion in the 7D3/2 and 9D3/2 states of Cs in the presence of an external dc electric field and without the influence of magnetic fields or atomic collisions. Initial alignment of angular momentum states was created by two-step excitation with linearly polarized laser radiation. The appearance of transverse orientation of angular momentum was confirmed by the observation of circularly polarized light. We present experimentally measured signals and compare them with the results of a detailed theoretical model based on the optical Bloch equations. The effect is odd under time reversal and should be taken into account in ever more sensitive searches for an electron electric dipole moment.     

光在Metasurface中的自旋-轨道相互作用

探讨了光在Metasurface中的自旋-轨道相互作用, 理论分析了Metasurface 对圆偏振和线偏振光的转换. 结果表明: 光与具有空间非均匀性和各向异性性的Metasurface的相互作用导致了自旋-轨道角动量的耦合. 采用Metasurface与螺旋相位片组合在一起进行了验证实验, 所得实验结果与理论分析完全一致. 这些结论有助于我们更加深入理解Metasurface 对光的操控.     

Light with a twist in its tail

Polarized light is a phenomenon familiar to anyone with a pair of polaroid sunglasses. Optical components that change the nature of the polarization from linear to circular are common in any undergraduate laboratory. Probably only physicists know that circularly polarized light carries with it an angular momentum that results from the spin of individual photons. Few physicists realize, however, that a light beam can also carry orbital angular momentum associated not with photon spin but with helical wavefronts. Beams of this type have been studied only over the last decade. In many instances orbital angular momentum behaves in a similar way to spin. But this is not always so: orbital angular momentum has its own distinctive properties and its own distinctive optical components. This article outlines the general behaviour of such beams; how they can be used to rotate microscopic particles; how they interact with nonlinear materials; the role they play in atom-light interactions and how the rotation of such beams results in a measurable frequency shift.     

The Effects of the Pion String at Heavy ion Collisions

We study the possible signals of the pion string associated with the QCD chiral phase transition in LHC Pb–Pb collision at energy s=5.5 TeV.We follow the Kibble–Zurek mechanism to discuss the production and evolution of the pion string.We will show that if the QCD chiral phase transition really takes place in the LHC Pb-Pb collision process and the phase transition is in the second order,the pion string will be inevitably produced and subsequently decay.The main effect of this phenomenon is that there is a generation of a large number of pions in the final state produced by the decay of the pion string, and these pions are mostly distributed in a low momentum region with p～143MeV; also there are lots of neutral pions distributed in a low momentum region with the mean momentum at p～21MeV.     

On the Thomas precession in the classical theory of relativistic radiation

It is demonstrated that the radiation of the angular momentum power of electromagnetic field is directly proportional to the Thomas precession frequency. Thereby the dynamical aspect of origin of this phenomenon is established for the first time.     

Dynamical behavior of disordered rotationally periodic structures: A homogenization approach

This paper put forth a new approach, based on the mathematical theory of homogenization, to study the vibration localization phenomenon in disordered rotationally periodic structures. In order to illustrate the method, a case-study structure is considered, composed of pendula equipped with hinge angular springs and connected one to each other by linear springs. The structure is mistuned due to mass and/or stiffness imperfections. Simple continuous models describing the dynamical behavior of the structure are derived and validated by comparison with a well-known discrete model. The proposed models provide analytical closed-form expressions for the eigenfrequencies and the eigenmodes, as well as for the resonance peaks of the forced response. These expressions highlight how the features of the dynamics of the mistuned structure, e.g. frequency split and localization phenomenon, depend on the physical parameters involved.     

Tight focusing of spirally polarized vortex beams

The tight focusing of spirally polarized focused vortex beams is analyzed numerically based on the vectorial Debye theory. The expressions for the electric field and the orbital angular momentum of focused beams are derived. It is shown that the intensity distribution in the focal plane is dependent on the specific spirally polarized state and the coefficient of the spiral polarization function. By presenting the phase contours of the component polarized in the radial direction, it is found that the radii of dislocation lines will increase with the increase of the power of the spirally polarization function. It is reveled that the same orbital angular momentum can be obtained for different spirally polarized state at certain distance along the propagation direction in the focal region. Besides, the orbital angular momentum distributions for different polarized states have fewer crossover points with each other for higher topological charge. The influence of the spirally polarized state on the orbital angular momentum in the focal plane is also studied.     

Spontaneous circulation in ground-state spinor dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates

We report on a study of the spin-1 ferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate with magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. By solving the nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii equations for this system, we find three ground-state phases. Moreover, we show that a substantial orbital angular momentum accompanied by chiral symmetry breaking emerges spontaneously in a certain parameter regime. We predict that all these phases can be observed in the spin-1 87Rb condensate by changing the number of atoms or the trap frequency.