Optical orbital angular momentum

Stephen M Barnett; Mohamed Babiker; Miles J Padgett

doi:10.1098/rsta.2015.0444

Optical orbital angular momentum

Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. 2017 Feb 28;375(2087):20150444. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2015.0444.

Authors

Stephen M Barnett¹, Mohamed Babiker², Miles J Padgett³

Affiliations

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK stephen.barnett@glasgow.ac.uk.
² Department of Physics, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK.
³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK.

Abstract

We present a brief introduction to the orbital angular momentum of light, the subject of our theme issue and, in particular, to the developments in the 13 years following the founding paper by Allen et al. (Allen et al. 1992 Phys. Rev. A 45, 8185 (doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.45.8185)). The papers by our invited authors serve to bring the field up to date and suggest where developments may take us next.This article is part of the themed issue 'Optical orbital angular momentum'.

Keywords: optics; orbital angular momentum; spin.