Using newly developed equations, the team has now demonstrated the unconventional spin properties of the electromagnetic waves carrying orbital angular momentum, which are important for optical communications, quantum technologies, high-resolution imaging and many other fields.
Commenting on this development, Professor Anatoly Zayats, Head of King’s Photonics & Nanotechnology Group, said:
Using this approach, it is very easy to see new, unexpected phenomena in the electromagnetic spin behaviour. For example, we predicted and experimentally observed dynamic behaviour of the transverse spin of guided waves arising due to spin-orbit coupling, which has completely different behaviour from the static transverse spin of evanescent plane waves.– Professor Anatoly Zayats