Generation of spatiotemporal optical vortices in ultrashort laser pulses using rotationally interleaved multispirals.

Abstract

Ultrashort optical vortex pulses carrying spatiotemporal orbital angular momentum (OAM) have inspired versatile applications such as the micromachining of integrated quantum chips and discoveries such as optical toroidal structures and OAM-carrying X-waves. Generating high-quality ultrashort vortices with controllable topological charges remains a crucial issue. Thus, we propose a rotationally interleaved multispiral to generate such vortices. A multispiral comprises multiple identical spirals rotated around the center in the equal-azimuthal interval and interleaved in equal-radius increments; this structure overcomes the previous structural asymmetry of the single spiral and improves the vortex quality. Accordingly, we conducted theoretical analyses, numerical simulations, and experimental investigations that demonstrated the feasibility of multispirals in generating the ultrashort vortices with symmetric distributions and flexibly controlling the topological charges. The proposed study is significant for broader applications involving ultrashort vortices and extensive investigations in related areas such as research on electron vortices, plasmonic vortices, and other matter vortices.