Angular momentum transfer to charged particles by interaction with Laguerre–Gauss pulses

Abstract

Orbital angular momentum of light and the associated Laguerre–Gauss modes have garnered increasing interest due to the many applications they promise in the fields of telecommunications and quantum information, as well as charged particle acceleration. Here, we use the numerical simulation of the dynamics of a large number of identical, charged, relativistic, but classical particles, forming a statistical ensemble and seen as test-particles in a time-dependent external electromagnetic field, to get insight into the process of a head-on collision with a pulsed Laguerre–Gauss mode. We have identified two steady-states regimes (low a0 and large a0), where the distribution of the final angular momentum gained by the particles as a function of their initial coordinates is well-behaved and does not change its structure with variations of the reduced amplitude. For small reduced amplitudes a0 of the incoming electromagnetic field, we have also found an analytic approximation of the expression for the angular momentum transferred to the particles after the pulse has left their region. Using both numerical integration and the analytic approximation, we have investigated the effects of the field’s gradient, initial phase of the field, polarization type, and azimuthal order m.