Manipulation of the orbital angular momentum of soft x-ray beams by consecutive diffractive optics

Nazir Khan; Rahul Jangid; Taras Stanislavchuk; Aaron Stein; Oleg Chubar; Andi Barbour; Andrei Sirenko; Valery Kiryukhin; Claudio Mazzoli

arXiv · 2511.17768

Manipulation of the orbital angular momentum of soft x-ray beams by consecutive diffractive optics

Nazir Khan·Rahul Jangid·Taras Stanislavchuk·Aaron Stein·Oleg Chubar·Andi Barbour·Andrei Sirenko·Valery Kiryukhin·Claudio Mazzoli

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Abstract

Production and manipulation of orbital angular momentum (OAM) of coherent soft x-ray beams is demonstrated utilizing consecutive diffractive optics. OAM addition is observed upon passing the beam through consecutive fork gratings. The OAM of the beam was found to be decoupled from its spin angular momentum (SAM). Practical implementation of angular momentum control by consecutive devices in the x-ray regime opens new experimental opportunities, such as direct measurement of OAM beams without resorting to phase sensitive techniques, including holography. OAM analyzers utilizing fork gratings can be used to characterize the beams produced by synchrotron and free electron lasers sources; they can also be used in scattering experiments.

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Nazir Khan, Rahul Jangid, Taras Stanislavchuk, Aaron Stein, Oleg Chubar, Andi Barbour, Andrei Sirenko, Valery Kiryukhin, Claudio Mazzoli. 2025-11-21. Manipulation of the orbital angular momentum of soft x-ray beams by consecutive diffractive optics. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.17768

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