  Breaking the diffraction limit and focusing laser beams to subwavelength
scale are becoming possible with the help of recent developments in plasmonics.
Such subwavelength focusing bridges different length scales of laser beams and
matter. Here we consider optical vortex, or laser beam carrying orbital angular
momentum (OAM) and discuss potential subwavelength magnetic phenomena induced
by such laser. On the basis of numerical calculations using
Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, we propose two OAM-dependent phenomena
induced by optical vortices, generation of radially anisotropic spin waves and
generation of topological defects in chiral magnets. The former could lead to
the transient topological Hall effect through the laser-induced scalar spin
chirality, and the latter reduces the timescale of generating skyrmionic
defects by several orders compared to other known means.
