Mesh of Spatiotemporal Optical Vortices with Programmable Intensity Nulls

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel two-dimensional mesh of spatiotemporal optical vortices with programmable nulls, demonstrating their generation, analysis, and extension via nonlinear processes, advancing structured light manipulation and high-capacity information encoding.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental realization of a 2D mesh of STOVs with programmable nulls and explores their spectral extension through second-harmonic generation.

Findings

Successful creation of a 2D mesh of STOVs with programmable nulls

Analysis of diffraction patterns for vortex detection

Extension of spectral range via nonlinear frequency doubling

Abstract

Light carrying transverse orbital angular momentum (T-OAM) in the form of spatiotemporal optical vortices (STOVs) is opening new degrees of freedom for structured light manipulation. Such spatiotemporal wavepackets hold significant potential for optical trapping, analog optical computing, studying photonic symmetry and topology, among others. Up to now, synthesizing of such vortices is limited in one dimension, either in temporal or spatial domain. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a two-dimensional flexible mesh of spatiotemporal optical vortices (M-STOV) with programmable intensity nulls, and analyze their diffraction patterns for detection. Furthermore, we extend the spectral range of M-STOV via second-harmonic generation while examining the transfer of OAM in this nonlinear process. This study establishes a foundational framework for designing higher dimensional spatiotemporal vortex fields and promises a high-capacity information carrier based on ST optical vortices.