Spectrally recycling space-time wave packets

Abstract

'Space-time' (ST) wave packets are propagation-invariant pulsed optical beams that travel rigidly in linear media without diffraction or dispersion at a potentially arbitrary group velocity. These unique characteristics are a result of spatio-temporal spectral correlations introduced into the field; specifically, each spatial frequency is associated with a single temporal frequency (or wavelength). Consequently, the spatial and temporal bandwidths of ST wave packets are correlated, so that exploiting an optical source with a large temporal bandwidth or achieving an ultralow group velocity necessitate an exorbitantly large numerical aperture. Here we show that `spectral recycling' can help overcome these challenges. 'Recycling' or `reusing' each spatial frequency by associating it with multiple distinct but widely separated temporal frequencies allows one to circumvent the proportionality between the spatial and temporal bandwidths of ST wave packets, which has been one of their permanent characteristics since their inception. We demonstrate experimentally that the propagation invariance, maximum propagation distance, and group velocity of ST wave packets are unaffected by spectral recycling. We also synthesize a ST wave packet with group velocity c/14.3 (c is the speed of light in vacuum) with a reasonable numerical aperture made possible by spectral recycling.