Orbital angular momentum from marginals of quadrature distributions

Abstract

We set forth a method to analyze the orbital angular momentum of a light field. Instead of using the canonical formalism for the conjugate pair angle-angular momentum, we model this latter variable by the superposition of two independent harmonic oscillators along two orthogonal axes. By describing each oscillator by a standard Wigner function, we derive, via a consistent change of variables, a comprehensive picture of the orbital angular momentum. We compare with previous approaches and show how this method works in some relevant examples.