Generation of femtosecond polygonal optical vortices from a mode-locked quasi-frequency-degenerate laser

Hongyu Liu; Lisong Yan; Liang Wang; Dongfang Li; Shenao Zhang; Xin Liu; Heyan Liu; Kunjian Dai; Qing Wang; Jinwei Zhang

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-01902-1

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Generation of femtosecond polygonal optical vortices from a mode-locked quasi-frequency-degenerate laser

Original Articles

- Generation of femtosecond polygonal optical vortices from a mode-locked quasi-frequency-degenerate laser
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 8, Pages: 2297-2307(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.School of Optical and Electronic Information and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
  2.School of Optics and Photonics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China
- Author bio：
  
  Jinwei Zhang (jinweizhang@hust.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-01902-1
  CLC：
- Received：16 December 2024，
  
  Revised：14 May 2025，
  
  Accepted：21 May 2025，
  
  Published Online：23 June 2025，
  
  Published：31 August 2025
- Accepted：
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Liu, H. U. et al. Generation of femtosecond polygonal optical vortices from a mode-locked quasi-frequency-degenerate laser. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2297-2307 (2025).
DOI：

Liu, H. U. et al. Generation of femtosecond polygonal optical vortices from a mode-locked quasi-frequency-degenerate laser. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 2297-2307 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-01902-1.

摘要

Abstract

Polygonal optical vortices—a new subset of optical vortices—uniquely enable numerous applications due to the new degrees of freedom offered and their customizable light intensity structure. So far

their generation has only been reported for continuous wave. Here

we demonstrate the first femtosecond polygonal optical vortex pulses

which is also the first pulsed demonstration of such vortices in general. From a mode-locked Yb: KGW laser oscillator

femtosecond Hermit-Gaussian pulses at the quasi-frequency-degenerate state were generated and subsequently converted by astigmatic mode conversion to femtosecond polygonal optical vortices. They have light intensity distributions of square

pentagonal

and hexagonal shapes and carry orbital angular momentums. In all these variations

the average power and pulse duration are greater than one watt and less than 500 fs. These results open the way to new applications in the fields of femtosecond optical tweezer and three-dimensional microstructure fabrication.

关键词

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references

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