Storming Majorana's Tower with OAM states of light in a plasma

F. Tamburini^1,2 and B. Thidé^3,4a

¹ Department of Astronomy, University of Padua - Vicolo dell' Osservatorio 3, I-33122 Padua, Italy, EU
² Associazione CIVEN - Via delle Industrie 5, Torre Hammon, I-30175 Venezia-Marghera, Italy, EU
³ Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Ångström Laboratory - P. O. Box 537, SE-751 21 Uppsala, Sweden, EU
⁴ Galilean School of Higher Education, University of Padua - Via Giovanni Prati 19, I-35122 Padua, Italy, EU

^a bt@irfu.se

Received: 27 September 2011
Accepted: 12 November 2011

Abstract

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 (Anderson P. W., Phys. Rev., 130 (1963) 439) when they propagate in a plasma. In an earlier paper (Tamburini F. et al., EPL, 90 (2010) 45001) 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.