Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences
Tohoku University

Light has many degrees of freedom such as intensity, wavelength, and polarization. Here two types of lights are focused, which are called circular polarized light and optical vortex. Circular polarized light is that direction of electric field is rotating with respective to traveling direction. Optical vortex shows donut like-shape intensity profile and rotating intensity with respective to traveling direction. It is well known that circular polarized light and optical vortex has spin and orbital angular momentum, respectively. These lights can be used to manipulate angular momentum in the material. I will try to understand the interaction between light and material mediated by angular momentum. Spin angular momentum shows magnetism in the material, which is used for magnetic storage devices. Final goal is low energy manipulation of magnetism using angular momentum of the light. We can control the interaction between the light and the material by fabricating the structure. Chiral metamaterials and plasmonic nano structures are one of the examples. These kinds of the structure will be used to enhance the interaction between the light and the material mediated by angular momentum.