Electrons in intense laser fields with local phase, polarization, and skyrmionic textures

TL;DR

This paper explores how structured intense laser fields with complex topologies influence electron dynamics, enabling control over electron wave functions, orbital angular momentum transfer, and subwavelength imaging of laser field topologies.

Contribution

It derives analytical expressions for electron wave functions in structured laser fields and demonstrates their use in imprinting optical vortex properties onto photoelectrons and imaging laser topologies.

Findings

Orbital angular momentum can be imprinted onto photoelectrons from optical vortices.

Photoelectrons can be accelerated or have momentum textures in modulated laser fields.

Subwavelength imaging of laser field topology using photoelectrons is demonstrated.

Abstract

Laser fields can be shaped on a subwavelength scale as to have a specific distribution in spin angular momentum, orbital structure, or topology. We study how these various features affect the strongly nonlinear electron dynamics. Specifically, we derive closed expressions for the wave function of an unbound electron subject to a generally structured, intense laser field and demonstrate its use for imprinting the orbital angular momentum of a propagating optical vortex onto photoelectrons emitted from atoms and traveling through the optical vortex. It is also shown that photoelectrons can be accelerated or momentum textured when moving through a focused, intense laser field whose spin angular momentum is modulated as to have a radial polarization, which also implies the presence of a strong electrical longitudinal component. Further results are presented on the subwavelength spatiotemporal imaging of a laser field topology, as demonstrated explicitly for the field's spin and orbital distributions of lossless propagating optical skyrmions imaged by photoelectrons.