  X-ray beams carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) are an emerging tool for
probing matter. Optical elements, such as spiral phase plates and zone plates,
have been widely used to generate OAM light. However, these optics are
challenging to use at x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) due to the high
impinging intensities. Here, we propose a self-seeded FEL method to produce
intense x-ray vortices. Unlike passive filtering after amplification, an
optical element will be used to introduce the helical phase in the linear
regime, significantly reducing the thermal load on the optical element. The
generated OAM pulse is then used as a seed and significantly amplified.
Theoretical analysis and numerical simulations demonstrate that the power of
the OAM seed pulse can be amplified by more than two orders of magnitude,
reaching peak powers of several tens of gigawatts. The proposed method paves
the way for high-power and high-repetition-rate OAM pulses of XFEL light.
