Ultrafast imaging of molecular chirality with photoelectron vortices

This is the plotting data and plotting scripts for the publication: “Ultrafast imaging of molecular chirality with photoelectron vortices”. Preprint available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.07289. A readme.txt file is included with the data.

Authors:
Xavier Barcons Planas, Andrés Ordóñez, Maciej Lewenstein, Andrew Stephen Maxwell

Abstract:

Ultrafast imaging of molecular chirality is a key step towards the dream of imaging and interpreting electronic dynamics in complex and biologically relevant molecules. Here, we propose a new ultrafast chiral phenomenon exploiting recent advances in electron optics allowing access to the orbital angular momentum of free electrons. We show that strong-field ionization of a chiral target with a few-cycle linearly polarized 800 nm laser pulse yields photoelectron vortices, whose chirality reveals that 
of the target, and we discuss the mechanism underlying this phenomenon. Our work opens new perspectives in recollision-based chiral imaging.