Prof. Enrique J. “Kiko” Galvez – Colgate University
Title: “Manifestations of Geometric Phase”
“The Orbital Angular Momentum of Light”
In recent years a new type of light beams has brought a lot of excitement to optical physics. Optical beams in high-order modes can propagate containing a phase singularity or vortex in their profile. This singularity gives rise to “orbital” angular momentum, in addition to the well known spin angular momentum associated to circular polarization. We investigate experimentally the properties of these beams and a new “geometric” phase associated with these optical beams, which manifests as a phase shift in the light wave. New interesting applications of these beams have been demonstrated, which include the rotation of objects, and new forms of quantum computation with more than two bits.