Ultrashort laser pulses with chromatic astigmatism

TL;DR

This paper introduces and analyzes ultrashort laser pulses with chromatic astigmatism, a novel spatio-temporal coupling that affects beam structure and propagation, with potential applications in imaging and ultrafast interactions.

Contribution

It presents a new type of spatio-temporal coupling called chromatic astigmatism, providing a simple description and analysis of its effects on various laser beam profiles.

Findings

Chromatic astigmatism induces unique space-frequency effects.

It breaks cylindrical symmetry in laser beams.

Potential applications in imaging and ultrafast science.

Abstract

Ultrashort laser pulses are described having chromatic astigmatism, where the astigmatic phase varies linearly with the offset from the central frequency. Such a spatio-temporal coupling not only induces interesting space-frequency and space-time effects, but it removes cylindrical symmetry. We analyze the quantitative effects on the spatio-temporal pulse structure on the collimated beam and as it propagates through a focus, with both the fundamental Gaussian beam and Laguerre-Gaussian beams. Chromatic astigmatism is a new type of spatio-temporal coupling towards arbitrary higher complexity beams that still have a simple description, and may be applied to imaging, metrology, or ultrafast light-matter interaction.