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

By Lorenzo Marrucci, Carlo Manzo, D. Paparo. Physical Review Letters, 2006

1,735 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Biomedical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c4950fc9bb26369182bcd30a863782cc873d71f1

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Biomedical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Internal flows and energy circulation in light beams (2010, positive): “The Jones transformation matrices of the form similar to the upper left 2 × 2 ‘transverse’ block of T̂ are also typical for spin-to-orbit AM conversions in anisotropic media [64, 67, 68].”
High‐Dimensional Quantum Communication: Benefits, Progress, and Future Challenges (2019, methodology): “More frequently experimental realizations make use of two other devices: holograms or q-plates [108, 109].”
Orbital Angular Momentum States Enabling Fiber-based High-dimensional Quantum Communication (2018, methodology): “They are prepared with two vortex plates (WPV10-1550, Thorlabs), which can be considered as nontunable q plates [46].”
Polariton polarization-sensitive phenomena in planar semiconductor microcavities (2009, background): “Recently, such a transfer of the spin of photons into orbital angular momentum has been demonstrated experimentally in inhomogeneous anisotropic media (Marrucci et al 2006) and tightly focused laser beams (Zhao et al 2007) in homogeneous isotropic media.”
Geometric phase from Aharonov–Bohm to Pancharatnam–Berry and beyond (2019, methodology): “ase plates (128), and pitch-fork holograms (129,130). In 2006, a device called the 𝑞-plate was introduced and was capable of generating OAM in the visible domain using a patterned liquid crystal cell (131). The 𝑞-plate works precisely under the principle of geometric phases. It consists of a biref”
Roadmap on structured light (2016, background): “Various concepts based on liquid crystal cells [14, 66, 67] as well as segmented waveplates [68] have been discussed in the literature (see sections 6 and 8).”
Twisted photons: new quantum perspectives in high dimensions (2017, neutral): “[96] Lorenzo Marrucci, C Manzo, and D Paparo.”