Orbital angular momentum coupling in elastic photon-photon scattering

Aboushelbaya, R. and Glize, K. and Savin, A. F. and Mayr, M. and Spiers, B. and Wang, R. and Collier, J. and Marklund, M. and Trines, R. M. G. M. and Bingham, R. and Norreys, P. A. (2019) Orbital angular momentum coupling in elastic photon-photon scattering. Physical Review Letters, 123 (11). 113604. ISSN 1079-7114 (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.113604)

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Abstract

In this Letter, we investigate the effect of orbital angular momentum (OAM) on elastic photon-photon scattering in a vacuum for the first time. We define exact solutions to the vacuum electromagnetic wave equation which carry OAM. Using those, the expected coupling between three initial waves is derived in the framework of an effective field theory based on the Euler-Heisenberg Lagrangian and shows that OAM adds a signature to the generated photons thereby greatly improving the signal-to-noise ratio. This forms the basis for a proposed high-power laser experiment utilizing quantum optics techniques to filter the generated photons based on their OAM state.