Angular momentum of photons and phase conjugation

Abstract

Using the concept of an ideal phase-conjugating mirror we demonstrate that regardless of internal physical mechanism the phase-conjugation of a singular laser beam is accompanied by excitation within the mirror of internal waves which carry doubled angular momentum in order to match angular momentum conservation. For a Brillouin hypersound wavefront-reversal mirror this means that each elementary optical vortex belonging to a speckle pattern emits an acoustical vortex wave with doubled topological charge. The exact spatial profiles of light intensity and the intensity of hypersound in the vicinity of the phase singularity are obtained. These spiral profiles have a form of double helix which rotates with the frequency of sound. An optoacoustic experiment is proposed for visualization of the wavefront reversal of twisted optical beams and tunable twisted sound generation.