Angular Momentum of Photons Emitted by Atoms

Abstract

It is shown that the spin and orbital angular momentum of electric dipole photons have the same operator structure and may differ from each other only by spatial dependence in the very vicinity of the atom. It is shown that the photon twins created by a dipole forbidden transition can manifest the maximum entanglement with respect to the angular momentum. It is shown that the states of photons with projection of angular momentum $m=0$ are less stable than those with $m= \pm 1$.