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

Although orbital angular momentum entanglement has been widely explored, it has often been considered fragile.

From Science Daily • Mar. 21, 2026

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

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

Figure 30.52 Only certain angles are allowed between the orbital angular momentum and an external magnetic field.

From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015