Zeeman splitting of photonic angular momentum states in a gyromagnetic cylinder

Abstract

We show that, under the presence of a static magnetic field, the photon eigenfrequencies of a circular gyromagnetic cylinder experience a splitting that is proportional to the angular momentum density of light at the cylinder surface. Such a splitting of the photonic states is similar to the Zeeman splitting of electronic states in atoms. This leads to some unusual decoupling properties of these nondegenerate photonic angular momentum states, which are demonstrated through numerical simulations.