Paper detail

Transverse spinning of unpolarized light

It is well known that spin angular momentum of light, and therefore that of photons, is directly related to their circular polarization. Naturally, for totally unpolarized light, polarization is undefined and the spin vanishes. However, for nonparaxial light, the recently discovered transverse spin component, orthogonal to the main propagation direction, is largely independent of the polarization state of the wave. Here we demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, that this transverse spin survives even in nonparaxial fields (e.g., tightly focused or evanescent) generated from a totally unpolarized light source. This counterintuitive phenomenon is closely related to the fundamental difference between the degrees of polarization for 2D paraxial and 3D nonparaxial fields. Our results open an avenue for studies of spin-related phenomena and optical manipulation using unpolarized light.