Konstantin Bliokh: Optical angular momentum opens up new dimensions of light

Konstantin Bliokh is a research scientist at the Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in RIKEN (Japan). His ongoing research areas include geometric phases; spin-orbit interactions; momentum and angular momentum; quantum vortices; relativistic wave equations; wave propagation, localization, and scattering in inhomogeneous media; quantum weak measurements; plasmonics and metamaterials; and coupling and resonances.

Bliokh received his MSc and PhD degrees in physics from Kharkov National University (Ukraine) in 1998 and 2001, respectively. He then worked at the Institute of Radio Astronomy (Ukraine) and collaborated with a number of scientific groups worldwide.

He was a post-doctoral fellow at Bar-Ilan University (Israel) from 2003 to 2005, a visiting research scientist at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 2007, a Linkage International research fellow at the Australian National University from 2008 to 2009, and a Marie Curie research fellow at the National University of Ireland from 2009 to 2011.

Bliokh's acheivements include the theory of spin Hall effect and other spin-orbit interaction phenomena for light; prediction and theory of electron vortex beams; and description of the extraordinary transverse spin and momentum in inhomogeneous optical fields. His scientific results have been published in 84 peer-reviewed full-length papers, reviews, book chapters, and have been presented in numerous conferences and workshops.