A Simple Analytical Model of the Angular Momentum Transformation in Strongly Focused Light Beams

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple ray-optics model to analytically describe how the angular momentum of strongly focused light beams transforms, focusing on the beam near the exit pupil and accounting for polarization changes.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel analytical ray-optics approach for modeling angular momentum transformation in strongly focused beams, including spin-to-orbital conversion, valid for various beam types.

Findings

Analytical expressions for angular momentum in focused beams.

Good qualitative and reasonable quantitative agreement with numerical models.

Model applicable to complex beams like Laguerre-Gaussian with mixed angular momentum.

Abstract

A ray-optics model is proposed to describe the vector beam transformation in a strongly focusing optical system. In contrast to usual approaches basing on the focused field distribution near the focal plane, we employ the transformed beam pattern formed immediately near the exit pupil. In this cross section, details of the output field distribution are of minor physical interest but proper allowance is made for transformation of the incident beam polarization state. This enables to obtain the spin and orbital angular momentum representations which are valid everywhere in the transformed beam space. Simple analytical results are available for the transversely homogeneous circularly polarized incident beam limited only by the circular aperture. Behavior of the spin and orbital angular momenta of the output beam and their dependences on the focusing strength (aperture angle) are analyzed. The obtained analytical results are in good qualitative and reasonable quantitative agreement to the calculation performed for the spatially inhomogeneous Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian beams. In application to Laguerre-Gaussian beams, the model provides possibility for analyzing the angular momentum transformation in beams already possessing some mixture of the spin and orbital angular momenta. The model supplies efficient and physically transparent means for qualitative analysis of the spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion. It can be generalized to incident beams with complicated spatial and polarization structure.