Inverse-Faraday effect from the orbital angular momentum of light

Abstract

It is usually admitted that the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) originates from the spin angular momentum (SAM) of light. In this paper, we evidence that part of the IFE in a metal is induced by the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of light. On the basis of a hydrodynamic model of the conduction electron gas, we describe the dependence of the IFE on the spin and orbital angular momenta as well as spin-orbit interaction in a non-paraxial light beam. We also numerically quantify the relative contributions of the SAM and OAM of light to the IFE in a thin gold film illuminated by different focused beams carrying SAM and/or OAM. The OAM of light provides a new degree of freedom in the control of the IFE and resulting optomagnetic field, thus potentially impacting various research fields including all-optical magnetization switching and spin-wave excitation.

References in corpus (6)

• Quantum spin Hall effect of light
• Angular Momenta and Spin-Orbit Interaction of Nonparaxial Light in Free Space
• Measuring the Transverse Spin Density of Light
• Observation of evanescent spin waves in the magnetic dipole regime
• Optomagnets in nonmagnetic plasmonic nanostructures
• A solver based on pseudo-spectral analytical time-domain method for the two-fluid plasma model

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Advances in ultrafast plasmonics
• Magnetoplasmonics: current challenges and future opportunities
• Designing rotational motion of charges on plasmonic nanostructures excited by circularly polarized light
• Light-induced Orbital and Spin Magnetism in $3d$, $4d$, and $5d$ Transition Metals
• Formulation of the orbital magnetic moment in multiorbital tight-binding models: Application to the inverse Faraday effect