Search for: All records

A spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) is an intrinsic optical orbital angular momentum (OAM) structure in which the OAM vector is orthogonal to the propagation direction [Optica6,1547(2019)OPTIC82334-253610.1364/OPTICA.6.001547] and the optical phase circulates in space-time. Here, we experimentally and theoretically demonstrate the generation of the second harmonic of a STOV-carrying pulse along with the conservation of STOV-based OAM. Our experiments verify that photons can have intrinsic orbital angular momentum perpendicular to their propagation direction.

We present a technique for the single-shot measurement of the spatiotemporal (1D$\mathrm{s}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{e}+\mathrm{t}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{e}$) amplitude and phase of an ultrashort laser pulse. The method, transient grating single-shot supercontinuum spectral interferometry (TG-SSSI), is demonstrated by the space–time imaging of short pulses carrying spatiotemporal optical vortices. TG-SSSI is well suited for characterizing ultrashort laser pulses that contain singularities associated with spin/orbital angular momentum or polarization.