Thursday, January 13, 2011

Electron Vortex Beams with High Quanta of Orbital Angular Momentum

Electron Vortex Beams with High Quanta of Orbital Angular Momentum
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/192.abstract

Benjamin J. McMorran1,*, Amit Agrawal1,2, Ian M. Anderson3, Andrew A. Herzing3, Henri J. Lezec1, Jabez J. McClelland1 and John Unguris1
+ Author Affiliations

E-mail: mcmorran@nist.gov
ABSTRACT

Electron beams with helical wavefronts carrying orbital angular momentum are expected to provide new capabilities for electron microscopy and other applications. We used nanofabricated diffraction holograms in an electron microscope to produce multiple electron vortex beams with well-defined topological charge. Beams carrying quantized amounts of orbital angular momentum (up to 100ℏ) per electron were observed. We describe how the electrons can exhibit such orbital motion in free space in the absence of any confining potential or external field, and discuss how these beams can be applied to improved electron microscopy of magnetic and biological specimens.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE SPECTROSCOPY USING LIGHT WITH ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMEMTUM

NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE SPECTROSCOPY USING LIGHT WITH ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100327866

Abstract:

The present invention relates to a device capable of producing a high resolution chemical analysis of a sample, such as fluid, based upon nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, where the nuclear magnetic polarizations of the sample are generated by sequentially illuminating the sample with a focused beam of light carrying angular orbital angular momentum (OAM) and possibly momentum (spin). Unlike in usual NMR used for magnetic nuclear resonance imaging (MRI) or spectroscopy, the invention does not make use of a strong magnet.

Read more: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20100327866#ixzz1AAq0YAF7

Chinese researchers move closer to deploying twisted light in optical fiber

Chinese researchers move closer to deploying twisted light in optical fiber - dramatic increases in bandwidth http://goo.gl/BZ08s

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a helical beam is of great interests in the high density optical communication due to its infinite number of eigen-states. In this paper, an experimental setup is realized to the information encoding and decoding on the OAM eigen-states. A hologram designed by the iterative method is used to generate the helical beams, and a Michelson interferometer with two Porro prisms is used for the superposition of two helical beams. The experimental results of the collinear superposition of helical beams and their OAM eigen-states detection are presented.