authors:
Laura Rego, Kevin M. Dorney, Nathan J. Brooks, Quynh Nguyen, Chen-Ting Liao, Julio San Román, David E. Couch, Allison Liu, Emilio Pisanty, Maciej Lewenstein, Luis Plaja, Henry C. Kapteyn, Margaret M. Murnane and Carlos Hernández-García
publication date:
2019-06-28
arXiv id:
abstract:

Light fields carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) provide powerful capabilities for applications in optical communications, microscopy, quantum optics, and microparticle manipulation. We introduce a property of light beams, manifested as a temporal OAM variation along a pulse: the self-torque of light. Although self-torque is found in diverse physical systems (i.e., electrodynamics and general relativity), it was not realized that light could possess such a property. We demonstrate that extreme-ultraviolet self-torqued beams arise in high-harmonic generation driven by time-delayed pulses with different OAM. We monitor the self-torque of extreme-ultraviolet beams through their azimuthal frequency chirp. This class of dynamic-OAM beams provides the ability for controlling magnetic, topological, and quantum excitations and for manipulating molecules and nanostructures on their natural time and length scales.