2011/05/31 by F. Tamburini, Fabrizio Tamburini, B. Thidé
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Engineering #MAJORANA #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics #Particle physics #Physics #Plasma #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Quantum optics and atomic interactions #Structural engineering #Tower #gr-qc #physics.plasm-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/96/64005
4 pages; Corrected, updated version
arxiv created 2011/11/24 · openalex publication_date 2011/12/01 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We extend the relationship between mass and spin angular momentum, described by the bosonic spectrum of positive definite mass particles of the Majorana solution to the Dirac equation, to photons that acquire an effective Proca mass through the Anderson-Higgs mechanism when they propagate in a plasma. In an earlier paper we showed that if the plasma is structured, it can impart orbital angular momentum (OAM) to the photons that reduces the total Proca photon mass. Here we show, through a generalisation of Majorana's solution, that photons with OAM in a plasma cannot assume negative squared mass states. This means that there exist interesting analogies with Quantum Gravity or General Relativity models involving a modified action of the Lorentz group.