August 2022
Spotlight Summary by Peter Banzer
Vector space-time wave packets
The structure of light, i.e. the spatial and temporal distributions of its inherent parameters such as intensity, polarization, frequency, etc, can be tailored and manipulated on demand and, thus, adapted to specifically desired applications. In many situations, the set of parameters to be sculpted is limited. However, the quest to fully structure light fields or pulses helped unleash intriguing spatiotemporal electromagnetic wave packets. In the work by Yessenov et al., published recently in Optics Letters, the authors elevate this discussion to a new level of sophistication by studying vectorial rather than scalar space-time wave packets. This is made possible by a spatial intensity and polarization as well as a temporal manipulation of the light field. They show theoretically and prove experimentally that the resulting space-time wave packets exhibit fascinating features like a drastically extended Rayleigh range. The authors envision potential applications in free-space communications through a turbulent atmosphere.
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Article Information
Vector space-time wave packets
Murat Yessenov, Zhaozhong Chen, Martin P. J. Lavery, and Ayman F. Abouraddy
Opt. Lett. 47(16) 4131-4134 (2022) View: Abstract | HTML | PDF