Effects of the Coupling between the Orbital Angular Momentum and the Temporal Degrees of Freedom in the Most Intense Ring of Ultrafast Vortices

Abstract

It has recently been shown that the temporal and the orbital angular momentum (OAM) degrees of freedom in ultrafast (few-cycle) vortices are coupled. This coupling manifests itself with different effects in different parts of the vortex, as has been shown for the ring surrounding the vortex where the pulse energy is maximum, and also in the immediate vicinity of the vortex center. However, in many applications, the ring of maximum energy is not of primary interest, but the one where the peak intensity of the pulse is maximum, which is particularly true in nonlinear optics applications such as experiments with ultrafast vortices that excite high harmonics and attosecond pulses that also carry OAM. In this paper, the effects of the OAM-temporal coupling on the ring of maximum pulse peak intensity, which do not always coincide with the ring of maximum pulse energy, are described. We find that there is an upper limit to the magnitude of the topological charge that an ultrafast vortex with a prescribed pulse shape in its most intense ring can carry, and vice versa, a lower limit to the pulse duration in the most intense ring for a given magnitude of the topological charge. These limits imply that, with a given laser source spectrum, the duration of the synthesized ultrafast vortex increases with the magnitude of the topological charge. Explicit analytical expressions are given for the ultrafast vortices that contain these OAM-temporal couplings effects, which may be of interest in various applications, in particular in the study of their propagation and interaction with matter.