Abstract
Sculpting light in space and time can provide unprecedented opportunities in many areas of science and technology, ranging from extreme nonlinear optics and quantum networks to new families of ultrafast fibre amplifiers. Although endeavours in accessing the light’s temporal and spatial degrees of freedom have been carried out, controlling the electromagnetic field in its entirety has always been a major challenge. Here we demonstrate a versatile approach to synthesize convoluted ultrafast light structures in which the spatial and temporal dimensions are precisely correlated. By utilizing a two-stage reconfigurable module, we produce separable and non-separable trains of ultrafast wavepackets with time-varying dynamic angular momentum and tailored spectral characteristics. The generated light states are observed using mode- and frequency-resolved tomographic methodologies capable of reconstructing their complex field structure in space and time. Our results could have ramifications in a broad range of applications such as high-resolution microscopy, high-harmonic generation and laser micromachining.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
All data that support the findings of this study are available within the paper and the Supplementary Information and are available from the corresponding author upon request.
Code availability
All the relevant computing codes used in this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
References
Kerse, C. et al. Ablation-cooled material removal with ultrafast burst pulses. Nature 537, 84–88 (2016).
Malik, M. et al. Multi-photon entanglement in high dimensions. Nat. Photon. 10, 248–252 (2016).
Mair, A., Vaziri, A., Weihs, G. & Zeilinger, A. Entanglement of the orbital angular momentum states of photons. Nature 412, 313–316 (2001).
Wang, J. et al. Terabit free-space data transmission employing orbital angular momentum multiplexing. Nat. Photon. 6, 488–496 (2012).
Li, L. et al. High-capacity free-space optical communications between a ground transmitter and a ground receiver via a UAV using multiplexing of multiple orbital-angular-momentum beams. Sci. Rep. 7, 17427 (2017).
Teğin, U., Yıldırım, M., Oğuz, İ., Moser, C. & Psaltis, D. Scalable optical learning operator. Nat. Comput. Sci. 1, 542–549 (2021).
Teğin, U., Yıldırım, M., Oğuz, İ, Moser, C. & Psaltis, D. Machine learning with multimode fibers. In 2021 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) 1–2 (IEEE, 2021).
Wetzstein, G. et al. Inference in artificial intelligence with deep optics and photonics. Nature 588, 39–47 (2020).
Lin, D. et al. Reconfigurable structured light generation in a multicore fibre amplifier. Nat. Commun. 11, 3986 (2020).
Wright, L., Cristodoulides, D. N. & Wise, F. W. Spatiotemporal mode-locking in multimode fiber lasers. Science 358, 94–97 (2017).
Malomed, B. A., Mihalache, D., Wise, F. & Torner, L. Spatiotemporal optical solitons. J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt. 7, R53–R72 (2005).
Dolev, I., Kaminer, I., Shapira, A., Segev, M. & Arie, A. Experimental observation of self-accelerating beams in quadratic nonlinear media. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 113903 (2012).
Fleischer, A., Kfir, O., Diskin, T., Sidorenko, P. & Cohen, O. Spin angular momentum and tunable polarization in high-harmonic generation. Nat. Photon. 8, 543–549 (2014).
Gariepy, G. et al. Creating high-harmonic beams with controlled orbital angular momentum. Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 153901 (2014).
Rego, L. et al. Generation of extreme-ultraviolet beams with time-varying orbital angular momentum. Science 364, eaaw9486 (2019).
Dorney, K. M. et al. Controlling the polarization and vortex charge of attosecond high-harmonic beams via simultaneous spin–orbit momentum conservation. Nat. Photon. 13, 123–130 (2019).
Rego, L. et al.Generation of extreme-ultraviolet beams with time-varying orbital angular momentum. Science 364, eaaw9486 (2019).
Piccoli, R. et al. Intense few-cycle visible pulses directly generated via nonlinear fibre mode mixing. Nat. Photon. 15, 884–889 (2021).
Liu, X., Du, D. & Mourou, G. Laser ablation and micromachining with ultrashort laser pulses. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 33, 1706–1716 (1997) .
Kraus, M. et al. Microdrilling in steel using ultrashort pulsed laser beams with radial and azimuthal polarization. Opt. Express 18, 22305–22313 (2010).
Heritage, J. P., Weiner, A. M. & Thurston, R. N. Picosecond pulse shaping by spectral phase and amplitude manipulation. Opt. Lett. 10, 609–611 (1985).
Thurston, R., Heritage, J., Weiner, A. & Tomlinson, W. Analysis of picosecond pulse synthesis by spectral masking in a grating pulse compressor. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 22, 682–696 (1986).
Durnin, J., Miceli, J. J. Jr. & Eberly, J. H. Diffraction-free beams. Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1499 (1987).
Bandres, M. A., Gutierrez-Vega, J. C. & Chavez-Cerda, S. Parabolic nondiffracting optical wave fields. Opt. Lett. 29, 44–46 (2004).
Kaminer, I., Bekenstein, R., Nemirovsky, J. & Segev, M. Nondiffracting accelerating wave packets of Maxwell’s equations. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 163901 (2012).
Siviloglou, G. A., Broky, J., Dogariu, A. & Cristodoulides, D. N. Observation of accelerating Airy beams. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 213901 (2007).
Yao, A. M. & Padgett, M. J. Orbital angular momentum: origins, behavior and applications. Adv. Opt. Photon. 3, 161–204 (2011).
Brittingham, J. N. Focus waves modes in homogeneous Maxwell’s equations: transverse electric mode. J. Appl. Phys. 54, 1179–1189 (1983).
Chong, A., Renninger, W. H., Christodoulides, D. N. & Wise, F. W. Airy–Bessel wave packets as versatile linear light bullets. Nat. Photon. 4, 103–106 (2010).
Kondakci, H. E. & Abouraddy, A. F. Diffraction-free space–time light sheets. Nat. Photon. 11, 733–740 (2017).
Kondakci, H. E. & Abouraddy, A. F. Optical space-time wavepackets having arbitrary group velocities in free space. Nat. Commun. 10, 929 (2019).
Yessenov, M. et al. Space-time wave packets localized in all dimensions. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.03095 (2021).
Chong, A., Wan, C., Chen, J. & Zhan, Q. Generation of spatiotemporal optical vortices with controllable transverse orbital angular momentum. Nat. Photon. 14, 350–354 (2020).
Cao, Q. et al. Sculpturing spatiotemporal wavepackets with chirped pulses. Photon. Res. 9, 2261–2264 (2021).
Wan, C., Chen, J., Chong, A. & Zhan, Q. Photonic orbital angular momentum with controllable orientation. Natl Sci. Rev. nwab149 (2021).
Chen, J., Wan, C., Chong, A. & Zhan, Q. Experimental demonstration of cylindrical vector spatiotemporal optical vortex. Nanophotonics 10, 4489–4495 (2021).
Wan, C., Chen, J., Chong, A. & Zhan, Q. Generation of ultrafast spatiotemporal wave packet embedded with time-varying orbital angular momentum. Sci. Bull. 65, 1334–1336 (2020).
Wan, C., Cao, Q., Chen, J., Chong, A. & Zhan, Q. Photonics toroidal vortex. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2109.02833 (2021).
Zdagkas, A. et al. Observation of toroidal pulses of light. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.03636 (2021).
Mounaix, M. et al. Time reversed optical waves by arbitrary vector spatiotemporal field generation. Nat. Commun. 11, 5813 (2020).
Baxter, G. et al. Highly programmable wavelength selective switch based on liquid crystal on silicon switching elements. In 2006 Optical Fiber Communication Conference and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference 1–3 (IEEE, 2006).
Morizur, J. F. et al. Programable unitary spatial mode manipulation. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 27, 2524–2531 (2010).
Fontaine, N. K. et al. Laguerre-Gaussian mode sorter. Nat. Commun. 10, 1865 (2019).
Gabolde, P. & Trebino, R. Self-referenced measurement of the complete electric field of ultrashort pulses. Opt. Express 12, 4423–4429 (2004).
Gabolde, P. & Trebino, R. Single-frame measurement of the complete spatiotemporal intensity and phase of ultrashort laser pulses using a wavelength-multiplexed digital holography. J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 25, A25–A33 (2008).
Kimel, I. & Elias, L. R. Relations between Hermite and Laguerre Gaussian modes. IEEE J. Quantum Electron. 29, 2562–2567 (1993).
Acknowledgements
This effort was sponsored, in part, by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research, (N00014-20-1-2789); the National Science Foundation (EECS-1711230); the Simons Foundation (733682); the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF; 2016381); the Army Research Office of Scientific Research (W911NF1710553 and W911NF1910426); and NASA (80NSSC21K0624).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
All authors contributed to all aspects of this work. D.C.D. performed the experiments in consultation with all the team members.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Photonics thanks Jose Azana, Pierre Bejot and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–19 and Sections I–IX.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Cruz-Delgado, D., Yerolatsitis, S., Fontaine, N.K. et al. Synthesis of ultrafast wavepackets with tailored spatiotemporal properties. Nat. Photon. 16, 686–691 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01055-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-022-01055-2
This article is cited by
-
Taming light in all dimensions
Nature Photonics (2022)