Generation of High-Energy Photons with Large Orbital Angular Momentum by Compton Backscattering

摘要

Usually, photons are described by plane waves with a definite 4-momentum. Inaddition to plane-wave photons, "twisted photons" have recently entered thefield of modern laser optics; these are coherent superpositions of plane waveswith a defined projection hbar*m of the orbital angular momentum onto thepropagation axis, where m is integer. In this paper, we show that it ispossible to produce high-energy twisted photons by Compton backscattering oftwisted laser photons off ultra-relativistic electrons. Such photons may be ofinterest for experiments related to the excitation and disintegration of atomsand nuclei, and for studying the photo-effect and pair production off nuclei inpreviously unexplored experimental regimes.