Optical helicity of interfering waves
arXiv:1308.1308 · doi:10.1080/09500340.2013.829874
Abstract
Helicity is a property of light which is familiar from particle physics but less well-known in optics. In this paper we recall the explicit form taken by the helicity of light within classical electromagnetic theory and reflect upon some of its remarkable characteristics. The helicity of light is related to, but is distinct from, the spin of light. To emphasise this fact, we draw a simple analogy between the helicity of light and electric charge and between the spin of light and electric current. We illustrate this and other observations by examining various superpositions of plane waves explicitly.
References in corpus (3)
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Cited by in corpus (10)
- Paraxial Skyrmionic beams
- Optimally Chiral Electromagnetic Fields: Helicity Density and Interaction of Structured Light with Nanoscale Matter
- Chiral near fields generated from plasmonic lattices
- Note on the helicity decomposition of spin and orbital optical currents
- Superpositions of up to six plane waves without electric-field interference
- Generation of Optical Chirality Patterns with Plane Waves, Evanescent Waves and Surface Plasmon Waves
- Photon helicity and quantum anomalies in curved spacetimes
- On lines of constant polarisation in structured light beams
- Microscopic analysis of spin-momentum locking on a geometric phase metasurface
- Spin-momentum locking breakdown on plasmonic metasurfaces