York hosts international conference on laser light with a twist

Posted on Wednesday 17 March 2010

While light is normally considered to possess planar wavefronts, certain types of laser light have been discovered where the wavefronts spiral in a similar way to the vortex created by a hurricane. The technical term covering these effects is “optical angular momentum”.

This property allows light to be used to rotate small particles of matter, including atoms, molecules and ions, creating miniature electric currents and magnetic fields and has important effects on new states of condensed matter called Bose-Einstein condensates.

This conference will bring together prominent international practitioners from across the world

Professor Mohamed Babiker

This type of light is now applied in many fields, including astrophysics, biology, and chemistry as well as physics.  Physicists at York are interested in its applications in the manipulation, cooling and trapping of atoms and molecules, including near surfaces.  Other applications include optical tweezers and spanners to manipulate matter at the nanoscale, as well as quantum information processing and quantum computing.

The future of this growing field of research will be discussed at the International Conference on Optical Angular Momentum which starts on Tuesday 23 March at the University of York.

The conference will be chaired by Professor Mohamed Babiker, from the Department of Physics at the University of York, and Professor David Andrews, from the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of East Anglia, who work together in this field.

Professor Babiker said: “This is the first ever international conference to be held that is dedicated to optical angular momentum and will bring together prominent international practitioners from across the world, including Europe, the United States and Australia, with significant contributions from the UK, which has been leading this field.

“The event will be an excellent opportunity for researchers in this area to present the latest advances and foster new international collaborations and partnerships."

More than 100 delegates are expected to attend the three-day conference which will feature 72 presentations by leading exponents in the field.

The conference is supported by the Institute of Physics and a special edition of the Journal of Optics has been commissioned to complement the event.