Ultrafast rotating dipole or propeller-shaped patterns: subwavelength shaping of a beam of light on a femtosecond time scale.

We report on a remarkable property of azimuthally (radially) polarized light beams containing a vortex or an orbital angular momentum: upon tight focusing of a first-order vortex beam, the subwavelength spot has a shape of an electric (magnetic) dipole rotating at an optical frequency. For beams with a vortex of order m, the generated pattern is propeller-shaped and rotates at a 1/m fraction of the optical frequency. The applications include petahertz control of electrical or optical conductance between two electrodes or waveguides of two-terminal junctions.