{"paper":{"title":"The R-index: A universal metric for evaluating OAM content and mode purity in optical fields","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["physics.app-ph"],"primary_cat":"physics.optics","authors_text":"Georgios M. Koutentakis, Mikhail Lemeshko, Mikhail Maslov, Monika Bahl, Oliver H. Heckl, Timo Gassen, Tom Jungnickel","submitted_at":"2025-08-18T14:50:39Z","abstract_excerpt":"Despite its pivotal role in optical manipulation, high-capacity communications, and quantum information, a general measure of orbital angular momentum (OAM) in structured light remains elusive. In optical fields, where multiple vortices coexist, the local nature of vortex OAM and the absence of a common rotation axis make the total OAM of the field difficult to quantify. Here, we introduce the R-index, a metric that captures the intrinsic OAM content of any structured optical field, from pure Laguerre-Gaussian modes to arbitrary multi-vortex superpositions. Not only does this metric quantify t"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2508.12973","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2508.12973/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}