Electron Vortices in Femtosecond Multiphoton Ionization

Multiphoton ionization of potassium atoms with a sequence of two counter-rotating circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses produces vortex-shaped photoelectron momentum distributions in the polarization plane describing Archimedean spirals. The pulse sequences are produced by polarization shaping and the three-dimensional photoelectron distributions are tomographically reconstructed from velocity map imaging measurements. We show that perturbative ionization leads to electron vortices with c_{6} rotational symmetry. A change from c_{6} to c_{4} rotational symmetry of the vortices is demonstrated for nonperturbative interaction.