EUV vortices

Two techniques to observe EUV optical vortices from FELs! 



Rebernik Ribič et al., Phys. Rev. X 7, 031036 (2017)


Extreme-ultraviolet vortices may be exploited to steer the magnetic properties of nanoparticles, increase the resolution in microscopy, and gain insight into local symmetry and chirality of a material; they might even be used to increase the bandwidth in long-distance space communications. However, in contrast to the generation of vortex beams in the infrared and visible spectral regions, production of intense, extreme-ultraviolet and x-ray optical vortices still remains a challenge. Here, we present an in-situ and an ex-situ technique for generating intense, femtosecond, coherent optical vortices at a free-electron laser in the extreme ultraviolet. The first method takes advantage of nonlinear harmonic generation in a helical undulator, producing vortex beams at the second harmonic without the need for additional optical elements, while the latter one relies on the use of a spiral zone plate to generate a focused, micron-size optical vortex with a peak intensity approaching 1014 W/cm2, paving the way to nonlinear optical experiments with vortex beams at short wavelengths.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 May 2021 18:41