Cecconi Vittorio, Kumar Vivek, Pasquazi Alessia, Totero Gongora Juan Sebastian, Peccianti Marco
Emergent Photonics (EPic) Lab, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN19QH, UK.
Emergent Photonics Research Centre and Dept. of Physics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK.
Open Res Eur. 2023 Feb 13;2:32. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.14508.3. eCollection 2022.
Controlling the transmission of broadband optical pulses in scattering media is a critical open challenge in photonics. To date, wavefront shaping techniques at optical frequencies have been successfully applied to control the spatial properties of multiple-scattered light. However, a fundamental restriction in achieving an equivalent degree of control over the temporal properties of a broadband pulse is the limited availability of experimental techniques to detect the coherent properties (i.e., the spectral amplitude and absolute phase) of the transmitted field. Terahertz experimental frameworks, on the contrary, enable measuring the field dynamics of broadband pulses at ultrafast (sub-cycle) time scales directly. In this work, we provide a theoretical/numerical demonstration that, within this context, complex scattering can be used to achieve spatio-temporal control of instantaneous fields and manipulate the temporal properties of single-cycle pulses by solely acting on spatial degrees of freedom of the illuminating field. As direct application scenarios, we demonstrate spatio-temporal focusing, chirp compensation, and control of the carrier-envelope-phase (CEP) of a CP-stable, transform-limited THz pulse.
控制宽带光脉冲在散射介质中的传输是光子学领域一个关键的开放性挑战。迄今为止，光频波前整形技术已成功应用于控制多重散射光的空间特性。然而，要对宽带脉冲的时间特性实现同等程度的控制，一个基本限制是用于检测透射场相干特性（即光谱幅度和绝对相位）的实验技术有限。相反，太赫兹实验框架能够直接在超快（亚周期）时间尺度上测量宽带脉冲的场动力学。在这项工作中，我们提供了一个理论/数值证明，在此背景下，复杂散射可用于实现对瞬时场的时空控制，并仅通过作用于照明场的空间自由度来操纵单周期脉冲的时间特性。作为直接应用场景，我们展示了时空聚焦、啁啾补偿以及对CP稳定、变换极限太赫兹脉冲的载波包络相位（CEP）的控制。
