Generation of Spatiotemporal Vortex Pulses by Simple Diffractive Grating

Abstract

Spatiotemporal vortex pulses are wave packets that carry transverse orbital angular momentum, exhibiting exotic structured wavefronts that can twist through space and time. Existing methods to generate these pulses require complex setups like spatial light modulators or computer-optimized structures. Here, we demonstrate a new approach to generate spatiotemporal vortex pulses using just a simple diffractive grating. The key is constructing a phase vortex in frequency-momentum space by leveraging symmetry, resonance, and diffraction. Our approach is applicable to any wave system. We use a liquid surface wave platform to directly demonstrate and observe the real-time generation and evolution of spatiotemporal vortex pulses. This straightforward technique provides opportunities to explore pulse dynamics and potential applications across different disciplines.

References in corpus (22)

• Photonic Cyclone: spatiotemporal optical vortex with controllable transverse orbital angular momentum
• Generating optical vortex beams by momentum-space polarization vortices centered at bound states in the continuum
• Free-space propagation of spatio-temporal optical vortices (STOVs)
• Spatio-temporal vortex beams and angular momentum
• Spatio-temporal optical vortices
• Geometrical Optics of Beams with Vortices: Berry Phase and Orbital Angular Momentum Hall Effect
• Photonic toroidal vortex
• Roadmap on spatiotemporal light fields
• Observation of Toroidal Pulses of Light
• Spatiotemporal Vortex Pulses: Angular Momenta and Spin-Orbit Interaction
• Spin and orbital angular momenta of acoustic beams
• Observation of acoustic spin
• Geometric Metasurface Fork Gratings for Vortex Beam Generation and Manipulation
• Mode structure and orbital angular momentum of spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) pulses
• Squeeze free space with nonlocal flat optics
• Spatiotemporal differentiators generating optical vortices with transverse orbital angular momentum and detecting sharp change of pulse envelope
• Symmetric and asymmetric solitons and vortices in linearly coupled two-dimensional waveguides with the cubic-quintic nonlinearity
• Observation of polarization singularities and topological textures in sound waves
• Orbital angular momentum of optical, acoustic, and quantum-mechanical spatiotemporal vortex pulses
• Transverse orbital angular momentum of spatiotemporal optical vortices
• Observation of acoustic spatiotemporal vortices
• Polarization singularities and Möbius strips in sound and water-surface waves

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Topological water-wave structures manipulating particles
• On the Ehrenfest theorem and centroids of relativistic particles
• Characterisation of temporal aiming for water waves with an anisotropic metabathymetry
• Orbital angular momentum of spatiotemporal vortices: a ray-mechanical analogy
• Time-diffracting 2D wave vortices
• Bulk-to-surface coupling of spatiotemporal vortices