Space-time beams with tunable orbital group velocity for plasma superradiance

TL;DR

This paper introduces tunable orbital group velocity in light springs, enabling control over their rotation speed and revealing superradiant terahertz radiation when interacting with plasma, advancing laser-matter interaction studies.

Contribution

It presents the experimental realization of tunable orbital group velocity in light springs and demonstrates their application in generating superradiant terahertz radiation.

Findings

Orbital group velocity can be tuned to sub- and superluminal values.

Superluminal light springs induce superradiant plasma radiation.

The generated terahertz source is controllable via spatiotemporal properties.

Abstract

Light springs are space-time beams that have a helical wavepacket. Due to this special property, light springs result into a rotating pulse when intercepting a plane lying orthogonal to their propagation direction. Associated to this, we introduce here the orbital group velocity, an additional tunable property of light springs. The orbital group velocity quantifies the speed of the light spring intensity rotation, distinctly from the conventional longitudinal group velocity, which describes the motion of the wavepacket envelope along its propagation axis. We demonstrate experimentally by tunable Fourier synthesis that the orbital group velocity can assume sub- and superluminal values, thus becoming a new platform for synthetic motion studies and control of laser-matter interactions. Particularly, in the superluminal regime, when interacting with a thin overdense plasma, we reveal by particle-in-cell simulations that the light spring unlocks superradiant radiation, due to the coherent excitation of the electrons in the plasma acting as a quasiparticle. This superradiant source inherits the ultrafast temporal dynamics of the light springs while emitting in the terahertz region, thus creating a new source of terahertz radiation controlled by the properties of spatiotemporal coupling of the laser. Therefore, spatiotemporal tuning of light springs is at the frontier of controlling laser-matter interaction and generating new tunable sources of radiation.