ANGULAR-MOMENTUM BALANCE ON LIGHT-REFLECTION

It was pointed out by Holbourn in 1936 that there is an apparent breakdown of angular momentum conservation on reflection of circularly polarized light at the plane interface between two lossless dielectrics. The analysis presented in this paper shows that this discrepancy does not arise provided that: (a) the intensities of the incident, reflected, and transmitted beams vanish at large distances from their axes, and (b) the angular momentum of each beam is calculated from first principles. © 1990 Taylor & Francis Ltd.