Perfect Spatiotemporal Optical Vortices

TL;DR

This paper introduces perfect spatiotemporal optical vortices (STOVs) that overcome previous limitations by having spatial and temporal dimensions independent of topological charge, enabling advanced vortex lattice manipulation.

Contribution

The paper presents a new class of STOV wavepackets, called perfect STOVs, generated via spatiotemporal Fourier transform of polychromatic Bessel-Gaussian beams, with independent spatial and temporal diameters.

Findings

Perfect STOVs have spatial and temporal sizes independent of topological charge.

Generation of spatiotemporal optical vortex lattices through colliding perfect STOVs.

Flexible control over the number and sign of sub-vortices in vortex lattices.

Abstract

Recently, spatiotemporal optical vortices (STOVs) with transverse orbital angular momentum have emerged as a significant research topic. While various STOV fields have been explored, they often suffer from a critical limitation: the spatial and temporal dimentions of the STOV wavepacket are strongly correlated with the topological charge. This dependence hinders the simultaneous achievement of high spatial accuracy and high topological charge. To address this limitation, we theoretically and experimentally investigate a new class of STOV wavepackets generated through the spatiotemporal Fourier transform of polychromatic Bessel-Gaussian beams, which we term as perfect spatiotemporal optical vortices. Unlike conventional STOVs, perfect STOVs exhibit spatial and temporal diameters that are independent of the topological charge. Furthermore, we demonstrate the generation of spatiotemporal optical vortex lattices by colliding perfect STOV wavepackets, enabling flexible manipulation of the number and sign of sub-vortices.