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New Way of Observing Light May Boost Info Content

Posted by Cliff on from the dance-of-the-photons dept.

md_seymour observes: "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA has a description and image of light that can twist as well as spin, based on research from Miles Padgett and Johannes Courtial of the University of Glasgow. They and their colleagues have apparently been able to sort individual photons by their orbital angular momentum. Since this characteristic of the photon is able to take on an infinite number of values, it may be possible to pack much more information into a light beam."

3 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. infinite? by Tom7 · · Score: 2, Redundant

    Since this characteristic of the photon is able to take on an infinite number of values,

    Not really though, right? Such values are discretized in the sense that the Planck length discretizes distance, right?

    1. Re:infinite? by rpresser · · Score: 1, Redundant

      As the other poster said, you can have L = +1, +2, +3, ..., -1, -2, -3 ... to any value. Which makes me wonder though, does a high L mean the photon carries more energy?

    2. Re:infinite? by Mr+Foot · · Score: 0, Redundant

      I wouldn't expect it to carry more energy because a photon is massless. At least classically rotational kinetic energy is zero for a massless particle. Though there may be some other quantum mechanical effect going on, the photon is hardly classical after all. It's a very interesting question...