7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Plasma Physics, 12-17 Nov, 2023 at Port Messe Nagoya

Plasma-based generation and application of intense vector beams
Qing Jia, Wei Liu, Lukai Wang and Jian Zheng
Department of plasma physics and fusion engineering, USTC, Chinae-mail (speaker): qjia@ustc.edu.cn
With the rapid development of revolutionary laser
techniques, a new type of laser fields—vector beams [1]with spatially varied polarization distributions havegained increasing attention because of their uniqueproperties that are different from traditional scalar lightfields[2]. Due to the thermal damage threshold, generationand manipulation of high-intensity vector beams arechallenging, while the plasma-based optical components
composed of free electrons and ions become potential
alternatives for high-power laser manipulation and havebeen extensively studied in recent years [3-5].
Previously, we proposed a magnetized- plasma-based
q-plate scheme to convert incident circularly-polarized
beam into twisted beam by employing the birefringenceeffect [6]. In this study, we propose a new scheme toconvert incident linear/circularly-polarized Gaussian
beams into cylindrical vector/vortex beams byemploying the Faraday rotation effect in an azimuthally
distributed axially magnetized plasma [7], as shown in
Fig.1. 3D particle-in-cell(PIC) simulations demonstratelarge conversion efficiency and wide applicablefrequency range.

an annular distribution of alternating high and low
density rings, which allows multi-focal focusing of highpower probe beams. The multi-focal intensity
distributions are consistent with the characteristics of thetraditional Fresnel zone plate, and the probe intensity canbe magnified up to more than two orders of magnitude as
demonstrated in Fig. 2(d).

Figure2. (a) Schematic of a PZP. An LG beam (l=2, p=4)
is launched into the plasma and generates a PZP, which
can be used to focus a probe beam. (b) Intensity patternof the pump beam. (c) Transverse density distribution ofthe PZP. (d) The intensity distribution of the probe beam
after traversing the PZP.
The above proposed schemes offer new plasma-based
methods to manipulate high-power lasers and pave theway for further studies on ultra-strong vector beams.
References

Figure 1: Illustration of a linearly ŷ/𝑧̂ -polarized beamtransformed into a radially polarized / azimuthallypolarized beam after passing through an axially (x̂)
magnetized plasma.
In addition, considering that the intensity pattern of an
Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beam with nonzero azimuthalmode index l and radial mode index p consists of p+1
halos separated from each other by dark rings and a dark
center, we construct a plasma zone plate (PZP) driven by
the ponderomotive force of an LG beam with a nonzero
p irradiating an underdense plasma slice [8]. As shown inFig. 2, the LG pump beam modulates the plasma to form

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