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Physical Review Letters

Rotational Frequency Shift

Iwo Białynicki‐Birula, Zofia Białynicka-Birula

Published Mar 31, 1997• 162 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The notion of the rotational frequency shift, an analog of the Doppler shift, is introduced. This new frequency shift occurs for atomic systems that lack rotational invariance, but have stationary states in a rotating frame. The rotational frequency shift is given by the scalar product of the angular velocity and the angular momentum of the emitted photon in full analogy with the standard Doppler shift which is given by the scalar product of the linear velocity of the source and the linear momentum of the photon. The rotational frequency shift can be observed only in a M\"ossbauer-like regime when the angular recoil is negligible.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.78.2539

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The notion of the rotational frequency shift, an analog of the Doppler shift, is introduced. This new frequency shift occurs for atomic systems that lack rotational invariance, but have stationary states in a rotating frame. The rotational frequency shift is given by the scalar product of the angular velocity and the angular momentum of the emitted photon in full analogy with the standard Doppler shift which is given by the scalar product of the linear velocity of the source and the linear momentum of the photon. The rotational frequency shift can be observed only in a M"ossbauer-like regime when the angular recoil is negligible.
The rotational Doppler shift of a photon with orbital angular momentum ±ℓℏ is shown to be an even multiple of the angular frequency Ω of the reference frame rotation when the photon is reflected from the phase-conjugating mirror. The one-arm phase-conjugating interferometer is considered. It contains N Dove prisms or other angular-momentum-altering elements rotating in opposite directions. When such interferometer is placed in the rotating vehicle, the δω=4(N+1/2)ℓ·Ω rotational Doppler shift appears. As a result, the helical interference pattern will rotate with angular frequency δω/2ℓ. The accumulation of angular Doppler shift via successive passages through the N image-inverting prisms is due to the phase conjugation; for a conventional parabolic retroreflector, the accumulation is absent. The features of such a vortex phase-conjugating interferometry at the single-photon level are discussed.
The rotational Doppler effect (RDE) is the angular analog of the linear Doppler effect, manifested by a frequency shift of a wave that is scattered from a rotating object. Here, we extend the sensing of this effect to the quantum optical regime. We demonstrate quantum Doppler shift sensing using a rotating photonic gear—a pair of spiral phase plates with opposite topological charge—in a two-photon N00N state interferometer. Continuous rotation of one plate produces time-varying coincidence fringes that reveal the rotational Doppler shift. The oscillation frequency scales with the topological charge ℓ of the spiral phase plate and the photon number N . Experiments with ℓ = 16 and ℓ = 128 confirm the predicted linear scaling while maintaining visibility, enabling quantum rotation sensing of slowly rotating objects.
We demonstrate that single photons from a rotating q-plate exhibit an entanglement in three degrees of freedom of spin, orbital angular momentum, and the rotational Doppler shift (RDS) due to the nonconservation of total spin and orbital angular momenta. We find that the rotational Doppler shift deltaomega = Omega((delta)s + deltal) , where s, l and Omega are quantum numbers of spin, orbital angular momentum, and rotating velocity of the q-plate, respectively. Of interest is that the rotational Doppler shift directly reflects the rotational symmetry of q-plates and can be also expressed as deltaomega = (Omega)n , where n = 2(q-1) denotes the fold number of rotational symmetry. Besides, based on this single-photon spin-orbit-RDS entanglement, we propose an experimental scheme to sort photons of different frequency shifts according to individual orbital angular momentum.
This chapter shows that the three operators are Hermitian and (in a rotationally invariant system) commute with the Hamiltonian; therefore they are observable constants of the motion. It finds out what their physical significance is. By knowing from classical mechanics, the constant of the motion arising from rotational invariance is the angular momentum. The angular momentum may split up into two parts: orbital and intrinsic. The orbital part can always be described by the dependence of a wave function, whereas the intrinsic part is by definition contained in the transformation property of the wave function. In the case of a single component (scalar), no intrinsic angular momentum exists. There are—apart from the vector addition and the scalar product—two other ways of combining two vectors: the direct sum and the direct product. Both occur in the theory of angular momentum, in fact whenever symmetry is involved.
When an atomic system emits or absorbs radiation, the frequency of the radiation is connected with the change of energy of the system by Bohr's frequency condition δE = hv. This equation is usually applied to the transition of an atom from one stationary state to another, the frequency of the radiation being measured in a frame of reference in which the atom as a whole is at rest, both before and after the transition. It has been pointed out by Bohr that difficulties arise when no natural frame of reference presents itself in which to measure the frequency, which is the case for non-isolated systems, or even for isolated systems when the process of radiation is connected with a change of momentum.