Non-spreading Bessel spatiotemporal optical vortices

Non-spreading nature of Bessel spatiotemporal wavepackets is theoretically and experimentally investigated and orders of magnitude improvement in the spatiotemporal spreading has been demonstrated. The spatiotemporal confinement provided by the Bessel spatiotemporal wavepacket is further exploited to transport transverse orbital angular momentum through embedding spatiotemporal optical vortex into the Bessel spatiotemporal wavepacket, constructing a new type of wavepacket: Bessel spatiotemporal optical vortex. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate that spatiotemporal vortex structure can be well maintained and confined through much longer propagation. High order spatiotemporal optical vortices can also be better confined in the spatiotemporal domain and prevented from further breaking up, overcoming a potential major obstacle for future applications of spatiotemporal vortex. (c) 2021 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

The non-spreading nature of Bessel spatiotemporal wavepackets has been investigated both theoretically and experimentally, showing significant improvement in spatiotemporal spreading. By embedding spatiotemporal optical vortices into Bessel spatiotemporal wavepackets, transverse orbital angular momentum can be transported, creating a new type of wavepacket. Experimental results demonstrate that the spatiotemporal vortex structures can be well maintained and confined, overcoming potential obstacles for future applications.