Abstract
High-order harmonic generation stands as a unique nonlinear optical up-conversion process, mediated by a laser-driven electron recollision mechanism, which has been shown to conserve energy, linear momentum, and spin and orbital angular momentum. Here, we present theoretical simulations that demonstrate that this process also conserves a mixture of the latter, the torus-knot angular momentum , by producing high-order harmonics with driving pulses that are invariant under coordinated rotations. We demonstrate that the charge of the emitted harmonics scales linearly with the harmonic order, and that this conservation law is imprinted onto the polarization distribution of the emitted spiral of attosecond pulses. We also demonstrate how the nonperturbative physics of high-order harmonic generation affect the torus-knot angular momentum of the harmonics, and we show that this configuration harnesses the spin selection rules to channel the full yield of each harmonic into a single mode of controllable orbital angular momentum.
- Received 22 October 2018
- Corrected 20 June 2019
- Corrected 25 July 2019
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.203201
© 2019 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Corrections
20 June 2019
Correction: Extra characters were inserted inadvertently in the DOI string for Ref. [33] during the final production stage and have been removed, enabling proper access.
25 July 2019
Second Correction: The previously published Figure 4 was processed improperly during the production cycle for the PDF version and its rendition has been corrected.