Quantum numbers and spectra of structured light

Abstract

It is shown that the description of light beams in terms of the corresponding photon quantum numbers elucidates the properties of these beams. In particular, this description shows that the helicity quantum number plays the fundamental role. This mode of description is applied to twisted and knotted electromagnetic waves. We concentrate on the cases where photon wave functions are eigenfunctions of one component of angular momentum. We discovered that for knotted waves the eigenvalue of the angular momentum determines the topology of knots.

Submitted to the special issue of Physica Scripta in honor of Wolfgang Schleich

References in corpus (4)

• Why photons cannot be sharply localized
• New knotted solutions of Maxwell's equations
• Quantum-mechanical description of optical beams
• Exponential beams of electromagnetic radiation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Real-time solutions of coupled Ehrenfest-Maxwell-Pauli-Kohn-Sham equations: fundamentals, implementation, and nano-optical applications
• Position and spin in relativistic quantum mechanics
• Backflow in relativistic wave equations
• Relativistic quantum-mechanical description of twisted paraxial electron and photon beams
• Twisted Localized Solutions of the Dirac Equation: Hopfion-like States of Relativistic Electrons
• New solutions of the Dirac, Maxwell and Weyl equations from the fractional Fourier transform