Ultrafast and ultra-intense optical vortices: Advances, applications, challenges, and perspectives

Optical vortex beams carrying orbital angular momentum provide a fundamental degree of freedom for structured light in space. Recent advances in ultrafast laser technology have extended optical vortices into the ultrafast and ultra-intense regime, where ultrashort pulse durations are combined with extremely high peak intensities. Such beams enable access to ultrafast, nonlinear, and strong-field light–matter interaction regimes, thereby unlocking emerging applications including laser-driven particle acceleration, micro- and nanofabrication, molecular detection, high-capacity optical communication and encryption, and advanced imaging. Motivated by these unique characteristics and exceptional application potential, this review article provides a comprehensive overview of ultrafast and ultra-intense optical vortices. We summarize key approaches for generation of ultrafast optical vortices using extracavity and intracavity techniques, discuss amplification strategies toward ultra-intense optical vortices, and review representative nonlinear and strong-field phenomena arising from vortex beam-matter interactions, together with recent advances in spatiotemporal characterization. Emerging applications are then highlighted, followed by a discussion of current challenges and future perspectives.