Manipulation of Giant Multipole Resonances via Vortex $γ$ Photons
Traditional photonuclear reactions primarily excite giant dipole resonances, making the measurement of isovector giant resonances with higher multipolarties a great challenge. In this work, the manipulation of collective excitations of different multipole transitions in nuclei via vortex $γ$ photons has been investigated. We develop the calculation method for photonuclear cross sections induced by the vortex $γ$ photon beam using the fully self-consistent random-phase approximation plus particle-vibration coupling (RPA+PVC) model based on Skyrme density functional. We find that the electromagnetic transitions with multipolarity $J< m_γ$ are forbidden for vortex $γ$ photons due to the angular momentum conservation, with $m_γ$ being the projection of total angular momentum of $γ$ photon on its propagation direction. For instance, this allows for probing the isovector giant quadrupole resonance without interference from dipole transitions using vortex $γ$ photons with $m_γ=2$. The electromagnetic transitions with $J>m_γ$ are strongly suppressed compared with the plane-wave-$γ$-photon case, and even vanish at specific polar angles. Therefore, the giant resonances with specific multipolarity can be extracted via vortex $γ$ photons. Moreover, the vortex properties of $γ$ photons can be meticulously diagnosed by measuring the nuclear photon-absorption cross section. Our method opens new avenues for photonuclear excitations, generation of coherent $γ$ photon laser and precise detection of vortex particles, and consequently, has significant impact on nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics and strong laser physics.