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Kelvin's chirality of optical beams

Sergey Nechayev1,2,3,4, Jörg S. Eismann1,2,4,5, Rasoul Alaee3,4, Ebrahim Karimi1,3,4, Robert W. Boyd3,4,6, and Peter Banzer1,2,4,5,*

  • 1Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Staudtstrasse 2, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
  • 2Institute of Optics, Information and Photonics, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Staudtstrasse 7/B2, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany
  • 3Department of Physics, University of Ottawa, 25 Templeton St., Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
  • 4Max Planck-University of Ottawa Centre for Extreme and Quantum Photonics, 25 Templeton St., Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
  • 5Institute of Physics, University of Graz, NAWI Graz, Universitätsplatz 5, Graz, 8010 Austria
  • 6Institute of Optics and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627 USA

  • *peter.banzer@uni-graz.at
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Phys. Rev. A 103, L031501 – Published 2 March, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.103.L031501

Abstract

Geometrical chirality is a property of objects that describes a three-dimensional mirror-symmetry violation and therefore it requires a nonvanishing spatial extent. In contrary, optical chirality describes only the local handedness of electromagnetic fields and neglects the spatial geometrical structure of optical beams. In this Letter we put forward the physical significance of geometrical chirality of spatial structure of optical beams, which we term Kelvin's chirality. Furthermore, we report on an experiment revealing the coupling of Kelvin's chirality to optical chirality upon transmission of a focused beam through a planar medium. Our work emphasizes the importance of Kelvin's chirality in all light-matter interaction experiments involving structured light beams with spatially inhomogeneous phase and polarization distributions.

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Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. A 103, L031501– Published 2 March, 2021
  • Received 17 December 2020
  • Accepted 10 February 2021
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