Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 163602 (2008) [4 pages]Spatial Symmetry and Conservation of Orbital Angular Momentum in Spontaneous Parametric Down-ConversionReceived 16 May 2008; published 17 October 2008 Directly contradictory arguments coexist regarding the conservation rule of orbital angular momentum in spontaneous parametric down-conversion. We analytically show how this rule is decided by spatial symmetry. We discover that the down-converted photon pairs can carry non-negligible extrinsic orbital angular momentum in the degrees of relative-movement freedom due to spatial symmetry breaking, leading to nonconservation of total orbital angular momentum in type-II down-conversion. Also, we demonstrate that the traditional technique does not measure the extrinsic orbital angular momentum. © 2008 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.163602
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.163602
PACS:
42.65.Lm, 11.30.−j, 42.50.Dv, 42.50.Ex
See AlsoComment: Geraldo A. Barbosa, Comment on “Spatial Symmetry and Conservation of Orbital Angular Momentum in Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 149303 (2009). Reply: Sheng Feng and Prem Kumar, Feng and Kumar Reply:, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 149304 (2009). |
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