Observation of spatiotemporal optical vortices enabled by symmetry-breaking slanted nanograting

Abstract Providing additional degrees of freedom to manipulate light, spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV) beams carrying transverse orbital angular momentum are of fundamental importance for spatiotemporal control of light-matter interactions. Unfortunately, existing methods to generate STOV are plagued by various limitations such as inefficiency, bulkiness, and complexity. Here, we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate a microscale singlet platform composed of a slanted nanograting to generate STOV. Leveraging the intrinsic topological singularity induced by C 2 symmetry and z-mirror symmetry breaking of the slanted nanograting, STOV is generated through the Fourier transform of the spiral phase in the momentum-frequency space to the spatiotemporal domain. In experiments, we observe the space-time evolution of STOV carried by femtosecond pulses using a time-resolved interferometry technique and achieve a generation efficiency exceeding 40%. Our work sheds light on a compact and versatile platform for light pulse shaping, and paves the way towards a fully integrated system for spatiotemporal light manipulation.