Abstract
A new experiment reveals differences between the electric and magnetic components of the transverse spin density in tightly confined beams of light, providing a new route to controlling spin in optical information applications.
Highlights
The transverse spin density (TSD) of light describes field vectors, which spin transversely with respect to the local propagation direction of the electromagnetic wave [1,2,3]
When a beam of light is laterally confined, its field distribution can exhibit points where the local magnetic and electric field vectors spin in a plane containing the propagation direction of the electromagnetic wave
Because of the directional emission of dipole moments that spin around an axis parallel to a nearby dielectric interface, such a probe particle is capable of locally sensing the magnetic and electric transverse spin density of a tightly focused beam impinging under normal incidence with respect to said interface
Summary
The transverse spin density (TSD) of light describes field vectors, which spin transversely with respect to the local propagation direction of the electromagnetic wave [1,2,3]. Further potential applications of the TSD can be found in particle manipulation experiments in optical tweezers [10,13,14] and sensing, for example, of magnetically induced circular dichroism [24,25] This interest in the TSD led to the development of highly sensitive techniques, capable of measuring the TSD in propagating and evanescent waves [15,26]. NEUGEBAUER, EISMANN, BAUER, and BANZER more general fields of light, this equivalence of sH and sE does not hold We explore, both theoretically and experimentally, the fundamental difference between the TSD of the magnetic and the electric field.
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