Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 2, 2025

Quasi-light Storage for Optical Data Packets
Published on: February 6, 2014
Space-time wave packets localized in all dimensions
Murat Yessenov1, Justin Free2, Zhaozhong Chen3
1CREOL, The College of Optics & Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, 32816, USA. yessenov@knights.ucf.edu.
Abstract:
Optical wave packets that are localized in space and time, but nevertheless overcome diffraction and travel rigidly in free space, are a long sought-after field structure with applications ranging from microscopy and remote sensing, to nonlinear and quantum optics. However, synthesizing such wave packets requires introducing non-differentiable angular dispersion with high spectral precision in two transverse dimensions, a capability that has eluded optics to date. Here, we describe an experimental strategy capable of sculpting the spatio-temporal spectrum of a generic pulsed beam by introducing arbitrary radial chirp via two-dimensional conformal coordinate transformations of the spectrally resolved field. This procedure yields propagation-invariant 'space-time' wave packets localized in all dimensions, with tunable group velocity in the range from 0.7c to 1.8c in free space, and endowed with prescribed orbital angular momentum. By providing unprecedented flexibility in sculpting the three-dimensional structure of pulsed optical fields, our experimental strategy promises to be a versatile platform for the emerging enterprise of space-time optics.
Related Concept Videos
Plane Electromagnetic Waves I
The EM field is assumed...
The Wave Nature of Light
The de Broglie Wavelength
Electromagnetic Wave Equation
However, although electric and magnetic fields were first introduced as mathematical constructs to simplify the description of mutual forces between charges, a natural question emerges from Maxwell's equations:...
Graphing the Wave Function
Travelling Waves
Water waves, sound waves, and seismic waves are some examples of mechanical waves. For water waves, the wave propagation medium is...

