2023/10/25 by Ren-Tong Guo, Guo, Ren-Tong, Mamutjan Ababekri +15 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Orbital Angular Momentum in Optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2310.16306
openalex publication_date 2023/10/25 · openalex created_date 2023/10/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Vortex γ photons, which carry large intrinsic orbital angular momenta (OAM), have significant applications in nuclear, atomic, hadron, particle and astro-physics, but their production remains unclear. In this work, we investigate the generation of such photons from nonlinear Compton scattering of circularly polarized monochromatic lasers on vortex electrons. We develop a quantum radiation theory for ultrarelativistic vortex electrons in lasers by using the harmonics expansion and spin eigenfunctions, which allows us to explore the kinematical characteristics, angular momentum transfer mechanisms, and formation conditions of vortex γ photons. The multiphoton absorption of electrons enables the vortex γ photons, with fixed polarizations and energies, to exist in mixed states comprised of multiple harmonics. Each harmonic represents a vortex eigenmode and has transverse momentum broadening due to transverse momenta of the vortex electrons. The large topological charges associated with vortex electrons offer the possibility for γ photons to carry adjustable OAM quantum numbers from tens to thousands of units, even at moderate laser intensities. γ photons with large OAM and transverse coherence length can assist in influencing quantum selection rules and extracting phase of the scattering amplitude in scattering processes.