Spin and orbital angular momentum correlations in parametric downconversion of Bessel beams

We present a full vectorial analysis of the parametric downconversion process using a pump Bessel beam and a photon description based on Bessel wavefunctions. We find that, under the considered geometry, optical angular momentum is conserved but the crystal induces a coupling between the optical spin angular momentum (SAM) and the optical orbital angular momentum (OAM) ruled by the nonlinear properties of the crystal via the second order susceptibility tensor chi((2))(ijk). This leads to nontrivial correlations between the expected values of the SAM and OAM of the resulting two-photon states. Distributions of orbital angular momentum of the downconverted photons are evaluated in detail for a specific set-up.