Transverse spin and momentum in two-wave interference
By A. Bekshaev, K. Bliokh, Franco Nori. 2014
208 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We analyze the interference field formed by two electromagnetic plane waves (with the same frequency but different wave vectors), and find that such field reveals a rich and highly non-trivial structure of the local momentum and spin densities. Despite the seemingly-planar and extensively-studied character of the two-wave system, we find that it possesses a transverse (out-of-plane) helicity-independent spin density, and also a transverse polarization-dependent momentum density with unusual physical properties. The polarization-dependent transverse momentum represents the so-called Belinfante spin momentum, which does not exert the usual optical pressure and it is considered as `virtual' in field theory. We perform analytical estimations and exact numerical simulations of the interaction of the two-wave field with probe Mie particles. The results of these calculations clearly indicate the straightforward detectability of the unusual spin and momentum properties in the two-wave field and strongly motivate their future experimental verifications.
Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/686b00cbc8d6cfb125a38f688fc4dfe6a144feb9
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In Artificial Intelligence
In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Citations in the corpus
- Direct measurements of the extraordinary optical momentum and transverse spin-dependent force using a nano-cantilever (2015, methodology): “The presence of the χ -dependent contribution to the transverse force allows to discriminate between the “intrinsic” transverse force predicted in [7,8], which originates from the inherent field properties, and “extrinsic” spin-dependent transverse forces which arise from the coupling between the pr”
- Structured Light: Ideas and Concepts (2020, background): “This is in contrast with the spinning mechanical action exerted by fields with SAM: a dipole particle can feel the field-induced mechanical torque T = Te + Tm only if it absorbs a part of the incident radiation [50, 51],”
- Transverse and longitudinal angular momenta of light (2015, methodology): “By exploiting a unified theory of optical angular momentum based on the canonical (rather than Poynting) momentum and spin densities [34,37,38,50,54,84], we aim to provide a coherent picture of all the basic kinds of AM, and describe their main physical features.”