Photoelectronic mapping of the spin–orbit interaction of intense light fields

Fang, Yiqi; Han, Meng; Ge, Peipei; Guo, Zhenning; Yu, Xiaoyang; Deng, Yongkai; Wu, Chengyin; Gong, Qihuang; Liu, Yunquan

doi:10.1038/s41566-020-00709-3

Cited by 43 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The intense vortex pulses also give rise to new selection rules for photoionization or photoexcitation process, accompanied by unique angular momentum transitions 29 , 30 . Recently, the OAM-dependent dichroic photoelectric effect 31 and the spin–orbit coupling of intense light fields in optical focusing systems 32 were successively demonstrated via photoionization experiments. In strong-field regime, the interaction between the intense laser pulses and targets is usually performed in a high-vacuum circumstance, the light pulses have to be focused to a small spatial scale to achieve high intensity, and the highly concentrated laser energy is destructive for optical instruments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the orbital angular momentum of intense vortex pulses with strong-field ionization

Fang

Guo

et al. 2022

Light Sci Appl

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With the rapid development of femtosecond lasers, the generation and application of optical vortices have been extended to the regime of intense-light-matter interaction. The characterization of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of intense vortex pulses is very critical. Here, we propose and demonstrate a novel photoelectron-based scheme that can in situ distinguish the OAM of the focused intense femtosecond optical vortices without the modification of light helical phase. We employ two-color co-rotating intense circular fields in the strong-field photoionization experiment, in which one color light field is a plane wave serving as the probing pulses and the other one is the vortex pulses whose OAM needs to be characterized. We show that by controlling the spatial profile of the probing pulses, the OAM of the vortex pulses can be clearly identified by measuring the corresponding photoelectron momentum distributions or angle-resolved yields. This work provides a novel in situ detection scenario for the light pulse vorticity and has implications for the studies of ultrafast and intense complex light fields with optical OAM.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the orbital angular momentum of intense vortex pulses with strong-field ionization

Fang

Guo

et al. 2022

Light Sci Appl

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“…It also provides a new freedom to influence the light matter interactions, facilitating atom trapping and guiding [3]. When the OAM is introduced to ultrashort pulses, more fascinating phenomena arise in the nonlinear propagation, such as the spatiotemporal vortices [4], vortex algebra [5] and orbital-to-spin angular momentum conversion [6]. One of the most attractive topics concerning femtosecond vortex beams is the high harmonic generation (HHG), which is an effective tool to generate extreme-ultraviolet vortex beams [7] and trains of attosecond light vortices [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Few-cycle vortex beam generated from self-compression of mid-infrared femtosecond vortex beam in thin plates

Xu¹,

Li²,

Chang³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We demonstrate theoretically that few-cycle vortex beam with subterawatt peak power can be generated by self-compression of mid-infrared femtosecond vortex beam using the thin-plate scheme. The 3 𝜇m femtosecond vortex beam with input duration of 90 fs is compressed to 15.1 fs with the vortex characteristics preserved. The conversion efficiency is as high as 91.5% and the peak power reaches 0.18 TW. The generation of the high-peak-power few-cycle vortex beam is owing to the proper spatiotemporal match by this novel scheme, where the spectrum is broadened enough, the negative group velocity dispersion can compensate the positive chirp induced by nonlinear effects, and multiple filamentation is inhibited for the keeping of the vortex characteristics. Our work will help to generate isolated attosecond vortices, opening a new perspective in ultrafast science.

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“…Vectorial structured light in 2D and 3D has been instrumental in a range of applications (see Refs. [10][11][12][13] and references therein), for example, to drive currents with a direction dictated by the vectorial nature of the optical field [14,15], imprinting the spatial structure into matter [16], enhanced metrological measurements [17,18], probing single molecules [19], and to encode more information for larger bandwidths [20][21][22][23]. They are easy to create in the laboratory using simple glass cones [24], stressed optics [25] and GRIN lenses [26], as well as from spatial light modulators and digital micro-mirror devices [27,28], non-linear crystals [29,30], geometric phase elements [31,32], metasurfaces [33] and directly from lasers [34].…”

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confidence: 99%

Revealing the invariance of vectorial structured light in perturbing media

Nape,

Singh,

Klug

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Optical aberrations have been studied for centuries, placing fundamental limits on the achievable resolution in focusing and imaging. In the context of structured light, the spatial pattern is distorted in amplitude and phase, often arising from optical imperfections, element misalignment, or even from dynamic processes due to propagation through perturbing media such as living tissue, free-space, underwater and optical fibre. Here we show that the polarisation inhomogeneity that defines vectorial structured light is immune to all such perturbations, provided they are unitary. By way of example, we study the robustness of vector vortex beams to tilted lenses and atmospheric turbulence, both highly asymmetric aberrations, demonstrating that the inhomogeneous nature of the polarisation remains unaltered from the near-field to farfield, even as the structure itself changes. The unitary nature of the channel allows us to undo this change through a simple lossless operation, tailoring light that appears robust in all its spatial structure regardless of the medium. Our insight highlights the overlooked role of measurement in describing classical vectorial light fields, in doing so resolving prior contradictory reports on the robustness of vector beams in complex media. This paves the way to the versatile application of vectorial structured light, even through non-ideal optical systems, crucial in applications such as imaging deep into tissue and optical communication across noisy channels.

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Photoelectronic mapping of the spin–orbit interaction of intense light fields

Cited by 43 publications

References 37 publications

Probing the orbital angular momentum of intense vortex pulses with strong-field ionization

Probing the orbital angular momentum of intense vortex pulses with strong-field ionization

Few-cycle vortex beam generated from self-compression of mid-infrared femtosecond vortex beam in thin plates

Revealing the invariance of vectorial structured light in perturbing media

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