Frame dragging with optical vortices

TL;DR

This paper explores how optical vortices, beams of light carrying orbital angular momentum, can cause inertial frame dragging effects on spinning particles, with implications for understanding gravitational interactions with light.

Contribution

It provides the first linear regime general relativistic calculations for optical vortices and compares their effects to those of ring lasers, estimating laser intensities needed for observable precession.

Findings

Optical vortices induce inertial frame dragging on spinning particles.

The estimated laser intensity for 1 Hz precession is provided.

Comparison with ring laser results shows similar effects.

Abstract

General Relativistic calculations in the linear regime have been made for electromagnetic beams of radiation known as optical vortices. These exotic beams of light carry a physical quantity known as optical orbital angular momentum (OAM). It is found that when a massive spinning neutral particle is placed along the optical axis, a phenomenon known as inertial frame dragging occurs. Our results are compared with those found previously for a ring laser and an order of magnitude estimate of the laser intensity needed for a precession frequency of 1 Hz is given for these "steady" beams of light.