Isochronous space-time wave packets

Abstract

The group delay incurred by an optical wave packet depends on its path length. Therefore, when a wave packet is obliquely incident on a planar homogeneous slab, the group delay upon traversing it inevitably increases with the angle of incidence. Here we confirm the existence of isochronous `space-time' (ST) wave packets: pulsed beams whose spatio-temporal structure enables them to traverse the layer with a fixed group delay over a wide span of incident angles. This unique behavior stems from the dependence of the group velocity of a refracted ST wave packet on its angle of incidence. Isochronous ST wave packets are observed in slabs of optical materials with indices in the range from 1.38 to 2.5 for angles up to $50^{\circ }$ away from normal incidence.

References in corpus (6)

• Diffraction-free space-time beams
• Anomalous refraction of optical space-time wave packets
• Accelerating and decelerating space-time optical wave packets in free space
• Ultrashort Tilted-Pulse-Front Pulses and Nonparaxial Tilted-Phase-Front Beams
• Gaussian beams diffracting in time
• Axial spectral encoding of space-time wave packets

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Observation of ultrabroadband striped space-time surface plasmon polaritons
• Non-differentiable angular dispersion as an optical resource
• Refraction of space-time wave packets in a dispersive medium
• Exciting space-time surface plasmon polaritons by irradiating a nanoslit structure
• Refraction of space-time wave packets: III. Experiments at oblique incidence