Speaker
Description
Vortex light with orbital angular momentum (OAM) have successfully been
generated in many laboratories. So far, however, energies of the particles with
OAM, called twisted photons or electrons, remain below 0.1 keV. Here we report
on the first high energy vortex photon beam obtained via Compton scattering of
the topologically charged (OAM=2) 2.3eV laser photons on the PETRA 6 GeV
electrons. According to angular momentum conservation, the scattered twisted
photons have topological charge 2 near their maximal energy of 588 MeV. This
opens up an unprecedented possibility for direct quadrupole excitation of nuclei
with evenly-charged twisted photons. After modifying the laser entrance pipe, we
plan to expand the energy range of twisted photons from 10 MeV to 1.1 GeV. That
will allow exploring multipole resonances in nuclei at MeV, as well in quark
matter inside the nucleons at GeV energies. The latter could pave a way towards
quark gamma laser with twisted photon pumping and cold nuclear fusion with
altered charge distributions in deuteron and tritium. The PETRA twisted photon
setup allows for fast flipping of the topological charge between ±2 or ±1 states,
which could be used for the quarks' orbital angular momentum measurements, by
twisted photons' scattering asymmetry; this could solve the long standing nucleon
spin puzzle. Employing the twisted Compton scattering at FLASH and E-XFEL
will expand the energy range of the twisted particles from keV to few GeV
energies, along with some possible applications. In perspective, extreme power
lasers will be required for the transition from proof of principle vortex beam
experiments to novel field of science and technology with twisted particles.
