Efficient generation and amplification of intense vortex and vector laser pulses via strongly coupled stimulated Brillouin scattering in plasmas

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that strongly-coupled stimulated Brillouin scattering in plasmas can efficiently amplify vortex and vector laser pulses, enabling high-power structured light with controllable angular momentum properties and potential for advanced optical devices.

Contribution

It introduces a plasma-based amplification method for vortex and vector lasers using SC-SBS, achieving high efficiency and polarization control, which is a novel approach in structured light generation.

Findings

Up to 65% energy transfer efficiency from pump to seed in plasma SC-SBS.

Polarization-dependent amplification enables all-optical polarization control.

Generation of intense light structures with controllable OAM and SAM through plasma interactions.

Abstract

The past decade has seen tremendous progress in the production and utilization of vortex and vector laser pulses. Although both are considered as structured light beams, the vortex lasers have helical phase fronts and phase singularities, while the vector lasers have spatially variable polarization states and polarization singularities. In contrast to the vortex pulses that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), the vector laser pulses have a complex spin angular momentum (SAM) and OAM coupling. Despite many potential applications enabled by such pulses, the generation of high-power/-intensity vortex and vector beams remains challenging. Here, we demonstrate using theory and three-dimensional simulations that the strongly-coupled stimulated Brillouin scattering (SC-SBS) process in plasmas can be used as a promising amplification technique with up to 65% energy transfer efficiency from the pump beam to the seed beam for both vortex and vector pulses. We also show that SC-SBS is strongly polarization-dependent in plasmas, enabling an all-optical polarization control of the amplified seed beam. Additionally, the interaction of such structured lasers with plasmas leads to various angular momentum couplings and decouplings that produce intense new light structures with controllable OAM and SAM. This scheme paves the way for novel optical devices such as plasma-based amplifiers and light field manipulators.