ABSTRACT
Optical vortices (twisted light), widely used in optical tweezers and
superresolution microscopes, exhibit wavefront helicity known as
orbital angular momentum caused by a phase singularity.
We propose a new approach to next-generation materials
processing by employing vortex lasers. We demonstrated for the
first time that optical vortices can twist material to fabricate chiral
nanostructures. The constituent elements (melted or vaporized
material) of the irradiated material receive the helicity of optical
vortices, thereby forming chiral nanostructures.