Credit: Kenan Qu, Princeton University
Converting a Gaussian laser beam into an optical vortex in magnetized plasma. An input Gaussian laser beam is sent through a plasma, which is mediated in an axial symmetric magnetic field generated by anti-Helmholtz coils. Traveling through the plasma twists the laser beam wavefront. The light red and blue shades at right show the isosurfaces of the wavefront in which the electric fields are parallel and perpendicular to the azimuthal directions, respectively. The small green circles show the polarization. The green ticks show the instantaneous directions of the electric fields. The green-shaded cylinder is the plasma and blue lines illustrate the magnetic field lines.