Electron vortex generations in photoionization of hydrogen atoms by circularly-polarized chirped attosecond pulses

Abstract

By numerically solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation and employing the analytical perturbative model, we investigated the chirp-induced electron vortex in the photoionization of hydrogen atoms by a pair of counter-rotating circularly polarized chirped attosecond extremely ultraviolet pulses. We demonstrated that single-photon ionization of hydrogen atoms generates photoelectron momentum distributions (PMDs) with distinct helical vortex structures either with or without a time delay between two counter-rotating circularly polarized laser pulses. These structures are highly sensitive to both the time delay between the pulses and their chirp parameters. Our analytical model reveals that the splitting of vortex spirals is caused by the sign changing of the chirp-induced frequency-dependent time delay. We showed that to obtain the counterpart of the PMD under a pair of counter-rotating circularly polarized chirped pulses, both chirp parameters and ordering of pulses need to be reversed.