High-Harmonic Generation and Spin-Orbit Interaction of Light in a Relativistic Oscillating Window

Abstract

When a high power laser beam irradiates a small aperture on a solid foil target, the strong laser field drives surface plasma oscillation at the periphery of this aperture, which acts as a "relativistic oscillating window". The diffracted light that travels though such an aperture contains high-harmonics of the fundamental laser frequency. When the driving laser beam is circularly polarised, the high-harmonic generation (HHG) process facilitates a conversion of the spin angular momentum of the fundamental light into the intrinsic orbital angular momentum of the harmonics. By means of theoretical modeling and fully 3D particle-in-cell simulations, it is shown the harmonic beams of order $n$ are optical vortices with topological charge $|l|=n-1$, and a power-law spectrum $I_n\propto n^{-3.5}$ is produced for sufficiently intense laser beams, where $I_n$ is the intensity of the $n$th harmonic. This work opens up a new realm of possibilities for producing intense extreme ultraviolet vortices, and diffraction-based HHG studies at relativistic intensities.

arXiv comment8 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (13)

• Spin-orbit interactions of light
• Hall Effect of Light
• Theory of high harmonic generation in relativistic laser interaction with overdense plasma
• Attosecond XUV vortices from high-order harmonic generation
• Tunable orbital angular momentum in high-harmonic generation
• Amplification and generation of ultra-intense twisted laser pulses via stimulated Raman scattering
• Generation of Intense High-Order Vortex Harmonics
• Light fan driven by relativistic laser pulse
• Optical control of the topology of laser-plasma accelerators
• Bright high-order harmonic generation with controllable polarization from a relativistic plasma mirror
• Bright X-ray source from a laser-driven micro-plasma-waveguide
• Coherent diffraction radiation of relativistic terahertz pulses from a laser-driven micro-plasma-waveguide
• Deflection of a reflected intense circularly polarized light beam induced by asymmetric radiation pressure

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Advances in laser-plasma interactions using intense vortex laser beams
• Deciphering in situ electron dynamics of ultrarelativistic plasma via polarization pattern of emitted gamma photons
• Stimulated-Raman-scattering amplification of attosecond XUV pulses with pulse-train pumps and application to local in-depth plasma-density measurement
• High-efficient harmonic vortex generation from a laser irradiated hollow-cone target