Elastic Spin and Orbital Angular Momenta
Konstantin Y. Bliokh
Abstract
Motivated by recent theoretical and experimental interest in the spin and orbital angular momenta of elastic waves, we revisit canonical wave momentum, spin, and orbital angular momentum in isotropic elastic media. We show that these quantities are described by simple universal expressions, which differ from the results of Chaplain et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 064301 (2022)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.128.064301] and do not require separation of the longitudinal and transverse parts of the wave field. For cylindrical elastic modes, the normalized z component of the total (spin+orbital) angular momentum is quantized and equals the azimuthal quantum number of the mode, while the orbital and spin parts are not quantized due to the spin-orbit geometric-phase effects. In contrast to the claims of the above article, longitudinal, transverse, and "hybrid" contributions to the angular momenta are equally important in general and cannot be neglected. As another example, we calculate the transverse spin angular momentum of a surface Rayleigh wave.