General relativistic manifestations of orbital angular and intrinsic hyperbolic momentum in electromagnetic radiation

TL;DR

This paper explores how electromagnetic beams with orbital and intrinsic hyperbolic momentum produce measurable general relativistic effects, including frame-dragging and a novel gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect, extending previous weak field analyses.

Contribution

It extends the weak field metric perturbation to include all coordinate configurations and gravitational effects from polarization and hyperbolic momentum, revealing new frame-dragging and Aharonov-Bohm phenomena.

Findings

Frame-dragging effects due to SAM, OAM, and SO coupling.

Discovery of a gravitational Aharonov-Bohm analog.

Influence of electromagnetic angular momentum on test particles.

Abstract

General relativistic effects in the weak field approximation are calculated for electromagnetic Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams. The current work is an extension of previous work on the precession of a spinning neutral particle in the weak gravitational field of an optical vortex. In the current work, the metric perturbation is extended to all coordinate configurations and includes gravitational effects from circular polarization and intrinsic hyperbolic momentum. The final metric reveals frame-dragging effects due to intrinsic spin angular momentum (SAM), orbital angular momentum (OAM), and spin-orbit (SO) coupling. When investigating the acceleration of test particles in this metric, an unreported gravitational phenomenon was found. This effect is analogous to the motion of charged particles in the magnetic field produced by a current carrying wire. It was found that the gravitational influence of SAM and OAM affects test-rays traveling perpendicular to the intense beam and from this a gravitational Aharonov-Bohm analog is pursued.