Few-cycle optical vortices for strong field physics

Abstract

We report on the generation of optical vortices with few-cycle pulse durations, 500$\mu$J per pulse, at a repetition rate of 1 kHz. To do so, a 25 fs laser beam at 800 nm is shaped with a helical phase and coupled into a hollow core fiber filled with argon gas, in which it undergoes self phase modulation. 5.5 fs long pulses are measured at the output of the fiber using a dispersion-scan setup. To retrieve the spectrally resolved spatial profile and orbital angular momentum (OAM) content of the pulse, we introduce a method based on spatially-resolved Fourier transform spectroscopy. We find that the input OAM is transferred to all frequency components of the post-compressed pulse. The combination of these two information shows that we obtain few-cycle, high intensity vortex beams with a well-defined OAM and sufficient energy to drive strong field processes.