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A regular laser beam travels straight, like the light from a flashlight. But light can be twisted into a spiral, like the thread of a corkscrew. Such a beam carries orbital angular momentum: it doesn't just illuminate, it also spins anything it encounters. Physicists directed this twisted light into a plasma to accelerate electrons.

In a plasma, the laser creates a wave — a wake similar to the one trailing a speedboat. Electrons catch this wave and get accelerated. With a twisted laser, the wake also twists. In the experiment, the electron beam split into two rays flying at different angles and with different energies. This means electrons were captured at different points in the helical wake.

Computer simulations showed that electrons don't fly straight but along helical lines, like along the threads of a screw. By controlling the twist of the laser, one can change the beam's shape. Such compact accelerators could be useful in medicine and materials science.

Original abstract

as written by the authors arXiv:2608.15039v1

Laser pulses carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) provide a new degree of freedom for controlling plasma-based accelerators. Here, we demonstrate experimentally laser wakefield acceler- ation driven by OAM laser pulses, producing electron beams with distinct broad-band energy spectra and angularly structured phase space. The measured spectra exhibit a two-beamlet structure with correlated angular dispersion, indicating injection occurring at multiple azimuthal phases of the plasma wake. Particle-in-cell simulations reproduced the observed spectral features and revealed helical electron trajectories driven by the OAM-induced wakefields. These results show that the phase structure of the laser driver can shape electron injection and acceleration dynamics, opening a route toward optimal control of beam structure in compact laser-driven accelerators.