Orbital angular momentum of light
Type of angular momentum in light
Orbital angular momentum of light
The orbital angular momentum of light (OAM) is the component of angular momentum of a light beam that is dependent on the field spatial distribution, and not on the polarization. OAM can be split into two types. The internal OAM is an origin-independent angular momentum of a light beam that can be associated with a helical or twisted wavefront. The external OAM is the origin-dependent angular momentum that can be obtained as cross product of the light beam position (center of the beam) and its total linear momentum. While widely used in laser optics, there is no unique decomposition of spin and orbital angular momentum of light.
Read on Wikipedia · Image Jack Kingsley-Smith, CC BY-SA 4.0
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