Topological monopoles and currents in electromagnetic waves

Abstract

Singularities, i.e. places of discontinuities of parameters are extremely general objects appearing in electromagnetic waves and thus are the key to understanding fundamental wave processes. These structures commonly occur in purely coherent, highly directional waves, such as laser beams, determining additional spatial or "`topological"' properties of the wave fields independently of their propagational dynamics. For instance, topologies of wave fronts, called phase singularities, add orbital degrees of freedom to electromagnetic waves. These singularities are common to all types of scalar waves described only by their intensity and phase distributions. As the electromagnetic wave is a vector wave, its topological properties generally depend on all field components leading to complex field patterns in space and time. These patterns may contain singular points of undefined instantaneous orientation of the vector field, i.e. the instantaneous field (IF) singularities. In zero-order paraxial approximation of purely transverse electromagnetic waves, some instantaneous field distributions may carry apparent topological monopoles, when the originally source-free wave exhibits spatial structure associated with the 2D "virtual" sources of electromagnetic fields. Here we present systematic description of topological singularities in both electric and magnetic field of the electromagnetic waves in a paraxial approximation. We also consider the important types of paraxial electromagnetic waves with complex transverse field structures containing instantaneous field singularities.