Last year, researchers identified a fundamental new property of light, and now a team of Irish scientists has shown that light can take on unexpected new forms. One of the ways we measure a beam of light is through its angular momentum - a constant quantity that measures how much light is rotating. And until now, it was thought that for all forms of light, the angular momentum would be a whole number (known as an integer) multiple of Planck's constant - a physical constant that sets the scale of quantum effects. But researchers led by Trinity College Dublin have now demonstrated that a new form of light exists, where the angular momentum is only half of this value. A discovery could lead to faster, more secure optical communication. http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-discovered-a-new-form-of-light
Fermionic statistics for 2D photons is very interesting and suggests e.g. novel new optical waveguide couplers or digital logic elements.
Again, Plazma Inferno!, this appears to be yet another example of a "Pop-Science" article. I must give props though to the Author, Fiona Macdonald, because she did include the following in her article : " But before we get anywhere close to benefitting from this new form of light, another team of researchers will need to replicate and validate this work to make sure it wasn't just a one-off. Science is often a slow process, but there's no denying its an exciting one. " - the ^^above quoted^^ from : http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-just-discovered-a-new-form-of-light If any members are truly interested in this "discovery", the actual 'Research Article' can be Read in full at the following Link : http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/4/e1501748.full
The relation of spin and statistics is different in 2-D domains than 3-D domains, so I think the claim of half-integral spin may be corrupted in transmission. // Edit: after reading the article, I believe the theoretical picture of the authors is garbled relative to the Quantum Field Theory sources and citations.
