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Orbital angular momentum of vector light fields
V.V. Kotlyar1,2, A.A. Kovalev1,2

1Image Processing Systems Institute, NRC "Kurchatov Institute", Molodogvardeyskaya str. 151, Samara, 443001, Russia;
2Samara National Research University, Moskovskoye Shosse 34, Samara, 443086, Russia

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DOI: 10.18287/COJ1705

Article ID: 1705

Abstract:
In this work, in addition to the well-known orbital angular momentum (OAM) vector, which characterizes azimuthal rate of phase change of each electric field component, we introduce two novel OAM vectors, polarization and hybrid ones, to characterize, respectively, azimuthal rates of change of the direction of the polarization ellipse axes and change of the ellipticity degree of the polarization ellipse. Longitudinal components of the three afore-mentioned OAM vectors in the focal plane are calculated at the sharp focus of a circularly polarized optical vortex and a higher-order cylindrical vector beam. It is shown that for the circularly polarized optical vortex, only the conventional and polarization OAMs are nonzero in the focal plane, meanwhile for the cylindrical field, it is the polarization OAM which is nonzero. The longitudinal component of the electric field does not contribute to the polarization OAM. It is interesting that the polarization OAM for the linearly polarized beam in the initial plane is zero, but in the plane of sharp focus of linearly polarized light this OAM is nonzero.

Keywords:
orbital angular momentum, vector light field, polarization orbital angular momentum, hybrid orbital angular momentum, sharp focusing, cylindrical vector beam.

Citation:
Kotlyar VV, Kovalev AA. Orbital angular momentum of vector light fields. Computer Optics 2026; 50(2): 1705. DOI: 10.18287/COJ1705.

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