Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics

Junyi Huang; Dong Zhao; Jixuan Shi; Hongliang Zhang; Hengyi Wang; Fang-Wen Sun; Qiwen Zhan; Shiyao Zhu; Kun Huang; Zhichao Ruan

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-02109-0

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Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics

Original Articles

- Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics
- Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics
- Light: Science & Applications 2026年15卷第3期页码：885-894
- Affiliations：
  
  1.School of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Extreme Photonics and Instrumentation, and Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
  2.Department of Optics and Optical Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
  3.Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 10010, China
  4.Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, China
  5.School of Optical-Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai 200093, China
  6.Zhejiang Key Laboratory of 3D Micro/Nano Fabrication and Characterization, Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, School of Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou 310027, China
  7.College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
  8.State Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronic Information Acquisition and Protection Technology, School of Physical Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China
- Author bio：
  
  Kun Huang (huangk17@ustc.edu.cn)
  Zhichao Ruan (zhichao@zju.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-02109-0
  中图分类号：
- 收稿：2025-05-14，
  
  修回：2025-10-16，
  
  录用：2025-10-26，
  
  网络首发：2026-01-22，
  
  纸质出版：2026-03-31
- Accepted：
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Junyi Huang, Dong Zhao, Jixuan Shi, 等. Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics[J]. Light: Science & Applications, 2026,15(3):885-894.

Huang, J. Y. et al. Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 885-894 (2026).
Junyi Huang, Dong Zhao, Jixuan Shi, 等. Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics[J]. Light: Science & Applications, 2026,15(3):885-894. DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02109-0.

Huang, J. Y. et al. Experimental demonstration of spatiotemporal analog computation in ultrafast optics. Light: Science & Applications, 15, 885-894 (2026). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02109-0.

摘要

Abstract

It is intractable to perform information processing and computation on single ultrafast optical pulses

within picoseconds or even femtoseconds. Here

we experimentally demonstrate an optical spatiotemporal differentiator

a mirror-symmetry-breaking dielectric metagrating

which performs analog computations of both spatial and temporal differentiations on single ultrafast optical wavepackets. The spatiotemporal differentiator is designed with a transfer function with linear dependence on spatial wavevector and temporal frequency and fabricated by using a double-exposure E-beam lithography process. We achieve the first-order spatiotemporal differentiation with experimental resolutions of approximately 14 μm (in space) and 260 fs (in time). Furthermore

we report a parabolic relationship between the transverse velocity of a front-tilted photonic wavepacket and the normalized intensity of its first-order spatiotemporal-differentiation wavepacket. This relationship allows direct measurement of the transverse velocity using only the normalized intensity

fundamentally simplifying velocity detection. These capabilities of optical spatiotemporal computation endow emerging space-time optics with fundamental computation blocks.

关键词

Keywords

references

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