Ultrafast bursts of tailored spatiotemporal vortex pulses

Xin Liu; Chunhao Liang; Qian Cao; Yangjian Cai; Qiwen Zhan

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-02062-y

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Ultrafast bursts of tailored spatiotemporal vortex pulses

Original Articles

- Ultrafast bursts of tailored spatiotemporal vortex pulses
- Light: Science & Applications Vol. 14, Issue 11, Pages: 3756-3764(2025)
- Affiliations：
  
  1.School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
  2.Shandong Provincial Engineering and Technical Center of Light Manipulations and Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optics and Photonic Device, School of Physics and Electronics, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, China
  3.Collaborative Innovation Center of Light Manipulations and Applications, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250358, China
  4.Zhejiang Key Laboratory of 3D Micro/Nano Fabrication and Characterization, Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310030, China
  5.Zhangjiang Laboratory, 100 Haike Road, Shanghai 201204, China
  6.International Institute for Sustainability with Knotted Chiral Meta Matter (WPI-SKCM2), Hiroshima University, Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8526, Japan
- Author bio：
  
  Yangjian Cai (yangjiancai@sdnu.edu.cn)
  Qiwen Zhan (qwzhan@usst.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-02062-y
  CLC：
- Received：09 April 2025，
  
  Revised：2025-08-30，
  
  Accepted：17 September 2025，
  
  Published Online：10 October 2025，
  
  Published：30 November 2025
- Accepted：
Scan QR Code
Liu, X. et al. Ultrafast bursts of tailored spatiotemporal vortex pulses. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 3756-3764 (2025).
DOI：

Liu, X. et al. Ultrafast bursts of tailored spatiotemporal vortex pulses. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 3756-3764 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02062-y.

摘要

Abstract

Orbital angular momentums (OAMs) of light can be catego

rized into longitudinal OAM (L-OAM) and transverse OAM (T-OAM). Light carrying time-varying L-OAM

known as self-torqued light

was recently discovered during harmonic generation and has been extensively developed within the context of optical frequency combs (OFCs). Meanwhile

ultrafast bursts of optical pulses

analogous to OFCs

are sought for various light-matter interaction

spectroscopic and nonlinear applications

–

1–6

. However

achieving transiently switchable T-OAM of light on request

namely spatiotemporal vortex pulse bursts

with independently controlled spatiotemporal profile of each comb teeth

remains unrealized thus far. In this work

the experimental generation of spatiotemporal vortex bursts featured with controllable time-dependent characteristics is reported. The resultant bursts comprised of spatiotemporal optical vortex comb teeth have picosecond timescale switchable T-OAMs with defined arrangement. We also show ultrafast control of T-OAM chirality

yielding pulse bursts with staggered azimuthal local momentum density

resembling Kármán vortex streets. This approach enables the tailoring of more intricate spatiotemporal wavepacket bursts

such as high-purity modes variation in both radial and azimuthal quantum numbers of spatiotemporal Laguerre-Gaussian wavepackets over time

which may facilitate a host of novel applications in ultrafast light-matter interactions

high-dimensional quantum entanglements

space-time photonic topologies as well as spatiotemporal metrology and photography.

关键词

Keywords

references

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