Physical meaning of the radial index of Laguerre-Gauss beams

Autor(en)

William N. Plick, Mario Krenn

Abstrakt

The Laguerre-Gauss modes are a class of fundamental and well-studied optical fields. These stable shape-invariant photons, exhibiting circular-cylindrical symmetry, are familiar from laser optics, micromechanical manipulation, quantum optics, communication, and foundational studies in both classical optics and quantum physics. They are characterized, chiefly, by two mode numbers: the azimuthal index indicating the orbital angular momentum of the beam, which itself has spawned a burgeoning and vibrant subfield, and the radial index, which up until recently has largely been ignored. In this paper we develop a differential operator formalism for dealing with the radial modes in both the position and momentum representations and, more importantly, give the meaning of this quantum number in terms of a well-defined physical parameter: the intrinsic hyperbolic momentum charge.

Organisation(en)

Quantenoptik, Quantennanophysik und Quanteninformation

Externe Organisation(en)

Télécom ParisTech, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)

Journal

Physical Review A

Band

92

Anzahl der Seiten

10

ISSN

1050-2947

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.063841

Publikationsdatum

12-2015

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

103026 Quantenoptik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/4050d542-c93f-4951-97c6-8ead4fef7a8d