Note on the helicity decomposition of spin and orbital optical currents

Aiello, Andrea; Berry, M. V.

doi:10.1088/2040-8978/17/6/062001

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Note on the helicity decomposition of spin and orbital optical currents

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons200999

Aiello, Andrea
Optical Quantum Information Theory, Leuchs Division, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Aiello, A., & Berry, M. V. (2015). Note on the helicity decomposition of spin and orbital optical currents. JOURNAL OF OPTICS, 17(6): 062001. doi:10.1088/2040-8978/17/6/062001.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002D-63BA-B

Abstract

In the helicity representation, the Poynting vector (current) for a monochromatic optical field, when calculated using either the electric or the magnetic field, separates into right-handed and left-handed contributions, with no cross-helicity contributions. Cross-helicity terms do appear in the orbital and spin contributions to the current. But when the electric and magnetic formulas are averaged ('electric-magnetic democracy'), these terms cancel, restoring the separation into right-handed and left-handed currents for orbital and spin separately.