Space-time wave packets
Murat Yessenov, Layton A. Hall, Kenneth L. Schepler, Ayman F., Abouraddy

TL;DR
Space-time wave packets are a class of optical fields that maintain their shape during propagation, exhibit unique controllable velocities, and have recently seen rapid experimental advances due to Fourier synthesis innovations.
Contribution
This paper reviews the fundamental properties, unique behaviors, and recent experimental developments of space-time wave packets, highlighting their potential in structured and ultrafast optics.
Findings
Propagation-invariant in linear media
Controllable group velocities in free space
Recent experimental synthesis techniques
Abstract
"Space-time" (ST) wave packets constitute a broad class of pulsed optical fields that are rigidly transported in linear media without diffraction or dispersion, and are therefore propagation-invariant in absence of optical nonlinearities or waveguiding structures. Such wave packets exhibit unique characteristics, such as controllable group velocities in free space and exotic refractive phenomena. At the root of these behaviors is a fundamental feature underpinning ST wave packets: their spectra are not separable with respect to the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom. Indeed, the spatio-temporal structure is endowed with non-differentiable angular dispersion, in which each spatial frequency is associated with a single prescribed wavelength. Furthermore, deviation from this particular spatio-temporal structure yields novel behaviors that depart from propagation invariance in a…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsOrbital Angular Momentum in Optics · Nonlinear Photonic Systems · Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics
