Generation of intense cylindrical vector beams by Faraday effect in plasma

Abstract

Cylindrical vector (CV) beams, whose polarizations are cylindrically symmetric, have recently been widely applied in high energy density physics such as electron acceleration and intense spatiotemporal optical vortices generation. Thermal-damage-resistant plasma optics are expected to generate intense CV beams. In this work, based on the Faraday effect, we propose a method that can directly convert an intense linearly/circularly polarized Gaussian beam into a CV/vortex beam by setting up an azimuthally distributed axial magnetic field in the plasma. Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations demonstrate good conversion efficiency, which offers a new degree of freedom for manipulating high-power laser pulses and paves the way for further studies on ultra-strong vector beams. In addition, our work reveals a new possible source of photon orbital angular momentum related to magnetized plasma in astrophysics and space physics.