The Effect of Orbital Angular Momentum on Nondiffracting Ultrashort Optical Pulses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new class of nondiffracting ultrashort optical pulses with orbital angular momentum, revealing a coupling between angular momentum and temporal properties, with potential applications in quantum communication and ultrafast photonics.

Contribution

It generalizes X-waves to include orbital angular momentum, establishing a link between spatial twist and optical cycle number in ultrashort pulses.

Findings

Coupling between angular momentum and pulse duration identified.

Spatial twist related to the number of optical cycles.

Potential for dispersion-free multi-level communication channels.

Abstract

We introduce a new class of nondiffracting optical pulses possessing orbital angular momentum. By generalizing the X-waves solution of the Maxwell equation, we discover the coupling between angular momentum and the temporal degrees of freedom of ultra-short pulses. The spatial twist of propagation invariant light pulse turns out to be directly related to the number of optical cycles. Our results may trigger the development on novel multi-level classical and quantum transmission channels free of dispersion and diffraction, may also find application in the manipulation of nano-structured objects by ultra-short pulses, and for novel approaches to the spatio-temporal measurements in ultrafast photonics.