English

Generation of ultrashort light pulses carrying orbital angular momentum using a vortex plate retarder-based approach

Optics 2024-03-13 v2 Applied Physics

Abstract

We use a vortex retarder-based approach to generate few optical cycles light pulses carrying orbital angular momentum (known also as twisted light or optical vortex) from a Yb:KGW oscillator pumping a noncollinear optical parametric amplifier generating sub-10 fs linearly polarized light pulses in the near infrared spectral range (central wavelength 850 nm). We characterize such vortices both spatially and temporally by using astigmatic imaging technique and second harmonic generation-based frequency resolved optical gating, respectively. The generation of optical vortices is analyzed, and its structure reconstructed by estimating the spatio-spectral field and Fourier transforming it into the temporal domain. As a proof of concept, we show that we can also generate sub-20 fs light pulses carrying orbital angular momentum and with arbitrary polarization on the first-order Poincar\'e sphere.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.07327,
  title  = {Generation of ultrashort light pulses carrying orbital angular momentum using a vortex plate retarder-based approach},
  author = {Tlek Tapani and Haifeng Lin and Aitor De Andres and Spencer W. Jolly and Hinduja Bhuvanendran and Nicolò Maccaferri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.07327},
  year   = {2024}
}