orbital angular momentum

American  

noun

Physics.

1. the component of angular momentum of an electron in an atom or a nucleon in a nucleus, arising from its orbital motion rather than from its spin.

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Example Sentences

Optical vortices, which are light beams that carry orbital angular momentum, offer remarkable opportunities for ultra-precise material processing, accelerating particles, expanding data transmission capacity and enabling next-generation photonics.

From Science Daily • Nov. 24, 2025

"Most experimentalists assume that the angular momentum of light can be split into spin and orbital angular momentum," said Palmerduca.

From Science Daily • May 23, 2024

An opponent could argue that although we thought we measured polarization, our apparatus actually probed some other property—say, the photon's orbital angular momentum.

From Scientific American • Apr. 24, 2023

Instead Chen, Wang and their colleagues prepared single-photon pairs and entangled two of their properties independently: their polarization state and a property called orbital angular momentum.

From Scientific American • Oct. 25, 2022

On the macroscopic scale, orbital angular momentum, such as that of the moon around the earth, can have any magnitude and be in any direction.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015