Doppler shift with a twist
Published: 2 August 2013
Writing in Science Magazine, Martin Lavery and Miles Padgett of the Optics Group with collaborators Stephen Barnet and Fiona Speirits from Strathclyde has shown that the familiar change in pitch of an approaching ambulance siren can also apply to spinning objects even when their linear velocity is zero
Writing in Science Magazine, Martin Lavery and Miles Padgett of the Optics Group with collaborators Stephen Barnet and Fiona Speirits from Strathclyde has shown that the familiar change in pitch of an approaching ambulance siren can also apply to spinning objects even when their linear velocity is zero. Doppler shifts apply not just to sound but light too. By measuring not all the light but just one component of its orbital angular momentum, the team have shown that a spinning object, such as a wheel, also produces a shift in frequency from which the rotation speed of the object can be deduced.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/537.abstract
First published: 2 August 2013
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