Brightγ-ray source with large orbital angular momentum from the laser near-criticalplasma interaction

We propose a new laser-plasma-based method to generate brightγ-rays carrying large orbital angular momentum by interacting a circularly polarized Laguerre–Gaussian laser pulse with a near-critical hydrogen plasma conflned in an over-dense solid tube.In the flrst stage of the interaction,it is found via fully relativistic three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations that high-energy helical electron beams with large orbital angular momentum are generated.In the second stage,this electron beam interacts with the laser pulse reflected from the plasma disc behind the solid tube,and helicalγbeams are generated with the same topological structure as the electron beams.The results show that the electrons receive angular momentum from the drive laser,which can be further transferred to theγphotons during the interaction.Theγbeam orbital angular momentum is strongly dependent on the laser topological charge l and laser intensity a_(0),which scales as L_(γ)∝a_(0)~4.A short(duration of 5 fs)isolated helicalγbeam with an angular momentum of-3.3×10^(-14)kg m~2 s^(-1)is generated using the Laguerre–Gaussian laser pulse with l=2.The peak brightness of the helicalγbeam reaches 1.22×10^(24)photons s^(-1)mm^(-2)mrad^(-2)per 0.1%BW(at 10 Me V),and the laser-to-γ-ray angular momentum conversion rate is approximately 2.1%.