Circular Polarization and Quantum Spin: A Unified Real-Space Picture of Photons and Electrons

A simple real-space model for the electron wavefunction is suggested, based on a transverse wave with helicity, rotating at mc^2/h. The mapping of the real two-dimensional vector phasor to the complex plane permits this to satisfy the standard time-dependent Schroedinger equation. This model is extended to provide an intuitive physical picture of electron spin. Implications of this model are discussed.

Strong rotating magnetic fields may cause a precession of the electron's spin around the rotation axis of the magnetic field. The superposition of two counterpropagating laser beams with circular polarization and opposite helicity features such a rotating magnetic field component but also carries spin. The laser's spin density, that can be expressed in terms of the lase's electromagnetic fields and potentials, couples to the electron's spin via a relativistic correction to th...

A quantum field theory approach is put forward to generalize the concept of classical spatial light beams carrying orbital angular momentum to the single-photon level. This quantization framework is carried out both in the paraxial and nonparaxial regimes. Upon extension to the optical phase space, closed-form expressions are found for a photon Wigner representation describing transformations on the orbital Poincare sphere of unitarily related families of paraxial spatial mod...

In the theory of modern physics, such as in relativity and quantum mechanics, the three-dimensionality of space is introduced as a presupposed fact. The three-dimensionality of particle motion, that is, the three-dimensionality of particle momentum, is a result of this fact. In this paper, I make two assumptions on the spin properties of photons, and then deduce a relation between the direction of photon momentum and the spin plane to which the photon spin state belongs. Base...

Because spatio-temporal tensors are associated with the Lorentz group, whereas spinors are associated with its covering group SL(2, C), one can associate with every tensor a spinor (but not vice versa). In particular, the (1,0)+(0,1) representation of SL(2, C) can provide a six-component spinor equivalent to the electromagnetic field tensor. The chief aim of this work is to develop the (1,0)+(0,1) description for the electromagnetic field in the absence of sources, rigorously...

The study of this paper demonstrates that electron has Dirac delta like internal momentum (u,p_{{\theta}}), going round in a circle of radius equal to half the reduced Compton wavelength of electron with tangential velocity c. The circular momentum p_{{\theta}} and energy u emanate from circular Dirac delta type rotating monochromatic electromagnetic (EM) wave that itself travels in another circle having radius equal to the reduced Compton wavelength of electron. The phenomen...

Context. Wavelength, photon spin angular momentum (PSAM), and photon orbital angular momentum (POAM), completely describe the state of a photon or an electric field (an ensemble of photons). Wavelength relates directly to energy and linear momentum, the corresponding kinetic quantities. PSAMand POAM, themselves kinetic quantities, are colloquially known as polarization and optical vortices, respectively. Astrophysical sources emit photons that carry this information. Aims. PS...

It has been known for a long time that light carries both linear and angular momenta parallel to the direction of propagation. However, only recently it has been pointed out that beams of light, under certain conditions, may exhibit a transverse spin angular momentum perpendicular to the propagation direction. When this happens, the electric field transported by the light rotates around an axis transverse to the beam path. Such kind of fields, although deceptively elusive, ar...

All elementary particles in nature can be classified as fermions with half-integer spin and bosons with integer spin. Within quantum electrodynamics (QED), even though the spin of the Dirac particle is well defined, there exist open questions on the quantized description of spin of the gauge field particle -- the photon. Using quantum field theory, we discover the quantum operators for the spin angular momentum (SAM) $\boldsymbol{S}_{M}=(1/c)\int d^{3}x\boldsymbol{\pi}\times\...

We offer a possible physical explanation for the origin of the electron spin and the related antisymmetry of the wave function for a two-electron system, in the framework of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics as provided by linear stochastic electrodynamics. A consideration of the separate coupling of the electron to circularly polarized modes of the random electromagnetic vacuum field, allows to disclose the spin angular momentum and the associated magnetic moment with a $g$-...