An international research team at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI has conducted experiments showing an optical analog of the Magnus effect, the physics principle that causes spinning balls to curve through the air in sports. The discovery involves how focused laser light interacts with individual ions at the atomic scale.
When laser beams are focused to extremely tight concentrations, their electromagnetic field structure becomes complex enough to alter where interactions with atoms occur most strongly. Rather than the strongest interaction happening at the beam’s brightest central point, it shifts slightly to one side. This sideways displacement mirrors the Magnus effect in classical physics, making it the optical equivalent of the phenomenon. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters.
The practical implications center on quantum computing applications. Laser light is routinely used to manipulate the quantum states of qubits with high precision, and ignoring the optical Magnus effect could introduce control errors. Conversely, the forces generated by this effect may offer advantages by enabling stronger coupling between qubits, potentially supporting more complex quantum computations, according to first author Philip Leindecker from PSI’s Center for Photon Science and ETH Zurich’s Department of Physics.
Researchers detected the effect using a single trapped calcium ion as an ultrasensitive probe. The ion, held nearly stationary using electromagnetic fields in an ion trap, was moved through different regions of the tightly focused laser beam while scientists measured interaction strength at each position. The calcium ion functioned as a microscopic sensor capable of detecting shifts as small as a few hundred nanometers. The measurements revealed that the magnitude of the sideways shift depends only on the light’s wavelength and not on how tightly the laser focuses.
The optical Magnus effect had been predicted theoretically by researchers at the University of Amsterdam several years prior. This experimental confirmation using a trapped ion as a microscopic probe marks the first direct observation of the phenomenon and provides detailed measurements of its behavior.
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