Intrinsic angular momentum, spin and helicity of higher-order Poincare modes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the intrinsic angular momentum, spin, and helicity of higher-order Poincare modes, revealing enhanced properties and the importance of axial field components for their characterization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework that emphasizes axial components, enabling the determination of intrinsic properties of higher-order Poincare LG modes, which were previously unassessed.

Findings

Higher-order Poincare LG modes exhibit super-chirality.

Inclusion of axial components is crucial for accurate property determination.

Significant enhancement of intrinsic properties compared to zero-order modes.

Abstract

The availability of coherent sources of higher order Poincare optical beams have opened up new opportunities for applications such as in the optical trapping of atoms and small particles, the manipulation of chirally-sensitive systems and in improved encoding schemes for broad-bandwidth communications. Here we determine the intrinsic properties of Poincare Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes which have so far neither been evaluated, nor their significance highlighted. The theoretical framework we adopt here is both novel and essential because it emphasises the crucial role played by the normally ignored axial components of the twisted light fields of these modes. We show that the inclusion of the axial field components enables the intrinsic properties of the Poincare modes, notably their angular momentum, both spin and orbital as well as their helicity and chirality, to be determined. We predict significant enhancements of the intrinsic properties of these modes when compared with those due to the zero order LG modes. In particular, we show that higher order LG Poincare modes exhibit super-chirality and, significantly so, even in the case of the first order