Sculpturing spatiotemporal wavepackets with chirped pulses

Pulse shaping has become a powerful tool in generating complicated ultrafast optical waveforms to meet specific application needs. Traditionally, pulse shaping focuses on the temporal waveform synthesis. Recent interests in structuring light in the spatiotemporal domain rely on Fourier analysis. A space-to-time mapping technique allows us to directly imprint complex spatiotemporal modulation through taking advantage of the relationship between frequency and time of chirped pulses. The concept is experimentally verified through the generation of spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) and STOV lattice. The power of this method is further demonstrated by STOV polarity reversal, vortex collision, and vortex annihilation. Such a direct mapping technique opens tremendous potential opportunities for sculpturing complex spatiotemporal waveforms. (C) 2021 Chinese Laser Press

Automated summary

Pulse shaping is a powerful tool for generating complex ultrafast optical waveforms, traditionally focusing on temporal waveform synthesis. Recent interest in structuring light in the spatiotemporal domain relies on Fourier analysis. The space-to-time mapping technique allows for direct imprinting of complex spatiotemporal modulation.