Topological light fields for driving and controlling charge and spin dynamics in nanostructures

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Having demonstrated theoretically and experimentally in the first funding period that the light orbital angular momentum (OAM) can be transferred to propagating electrons by photoionizing a thermal distribution of atoms in the gas phase with a combination of lasers carrying OAM, we aim in this project at exploiting OAM as a resource for entanglement by imprinting the optical OAM on two correlated electrons and assessing for their entanglement with respect to OAM. Using analytical and fully numerical simulations we will calculate the fully differential, OAM-resolved cross sections and infer from them a measure for the electron pair entanglement. Furthermore, we will combine laser fields with different intensities and embodying different OAM and spin angular momentum SAM in order to control spatio-temporally the amount of angular momentum transferred to the target. The results will serve to quantify the symmetry and topology of the target as well as to drive the electronic and spin states with laser fields that exhibit the appropriate SAM and OAM textures. As targets, we will study atomic, molecular and spin-active nanostructures with various symmetry, geometry, and topology. The theory on atomic and molecular systems will be developed in close cooperation with our experimental partners and the corresponding experiments are supported with simulations and analytical modelling.