<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Hi Dan,<div class=""> Thanks for your note about this discovery of a new property of light, “self-torque"</div><div class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="B430A88A-05B7-455C-B02A-DA8E464CA92A" width="480" height="624" src="cid:9AB2F334-D1D1-464B-8F62-84B63710BE1C@hsd1.ca.comcast.net." class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">which is reminiscent of the superluminal double-helix model of the photon, though with clearly significant differences.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><img apple-inline="yes" id="2A0FF1C8-8FF7-4798-A8DE-C1E6FCD6973D" width="437" height="220" src="cid:68141718-6E0D-4A12-A55E-179AB2E359E1@hsd1.ca.comcast.net." class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">all the best,</div><div class=""> Richard<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Jun 29, 2019, at 2:56 AM, DataPacRat <<a href="mailto:datapacrat@gmail.com" class="">datapacrat@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">An article I believe is of interest to the members of this list:<br class=""><br class=""><a href="https://phys.org/news/2019-06-property.html" class="">https://phys.org/news/2019-06-property.html</a><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">New property of light discovered<br class="">by Bob Yirka, Science X Network, Phys.org<br class=""><br class="">A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Spain and the U.S. has<br class="">announced that they have discovered a new property of light—self-torque. In their paper<br class="">published in the journal Science, the group describes how they happened to spot the new<br class="">property and possible uses for it.<br class=""><br class="">Scientists have long known about such properties of light as wavelength. More recently,<br class="">researchers have found that light can also be twisted, a property called angular<br class="">momentum. Beams with highly structured angular momentum are said to have orbital<br class="">angular momentum (OAM), and are called vortex beams. They appear as a helix<br class="">surrounding a common center, and when they strike a flat surface, they appear as<br class="">doughnut-shaped. In this new effort, the researchers were working with OAM beams<br class="">when they found the light behaving in a way that had never been seen before.<br class=""><br class="">The experiments involved firing two lasers at a cloud of argon gas—doing so forced the<br class="">beams to overlap, and they joined and were emitted as a single beam from the other side<br class="">of the argon cloud. The result was a type of vortex beam. The researchers then<br class="">wondered what would happen if the lasers had different orbital angular momentum and if<br class="">they were slightly out of sync. This resulted in a beam that looked like a corkscrew with a<br class="">gradually changing twist. And when the beam struck a flat surface, it looked like a<br class="">crescent moon. The researchers noted that looked at another way, a single photon at the<br class="">front of the beam was orbiting around its center more slowly than a photon at the back of<br class="">the beam. The researchers promptly dubbed the new property self-torque—and not only<br class="">is it a newly discovered property of light, it is also one that has never even been<br class="">predicted.<br class=""><br class="">The researchers suggest that it should be possible to use their technique to modulate the<br class="">orbital angular momentum of light in ways very similar to modulating frequencies in<br class="">communications equipment. This could lead to the development of novel devices that<br class="">make use of manipulating extremely tiny materials.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">The actual published article is at<br class="">https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1901/1901.10942.pdf . Discovered<br class="">via the blog article at<br class="">https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/06/29/0039231/new-property-of-light-discovered<br class="">, where one comment links to<br class="">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0056086<br class="">, which includes the conclusion "In conclusion, twisted waves cannot<br class="">carry information that is independent from the information contained<br class="">in plane wave modes at the same frequency."<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Thank you for your time,<br class="">--<br class="">Dan Boese, aka DataPacRat<br class="">"Does aₘᵢₙ=2c²/Θ ? I don't know, but wouldn't it be fascinating if it were?"<br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">If you no longer wish to receive communication from the Nature of Light and Particles General Discussion List at richgauthier@gmail.com<br class=""><a href="http://lists.natureoflightandparticles.org/options.cgi/general-natureoflightandparticles.org/richgauthier%40gmail.com?unsub=1&unsubconfirm=1"><br class="">Click here to unsubscribe<br class=""></a><br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>