Space-time wave packets in multimode optical fibers with controlled dynamic motions and tunable group velocities

Xinzhou Su (), Kaiheng Zou, Yingning Wang, Murat Yessenov, Huibin Zhou, Hao Song, Wing Ko, Ruoyu Zeng, Abdulrahman Alhaddad, Murale Ramakrishnan, Yuxiang Duan, Ayman F. Abouraddy, Moshe Tur, Demetrios N. Christodoulides and Alan E. Willner ()
Additional contact information
Xinzhou Su: Univ. of Southern California
Kaiheng Zou: Univ. of Southern California
Yingning Wang: Univ. of Southern California
Murat Yessenov: University of Central Florida
Huibin Zhou: Univ. of Southern California
Hao Song: Univ. of Southern California
Wing Ko: Univ. of Southern California
Ruoyu Zeng: Univ. of Southern California
Abdulrahman Alhaddad: Univ. of Southern California
Murale Ramakrishnan: Univ. of Southern California
Yuxiang Duan: Univ. of Southern California
Ayman F. Abouraddy: University of Central Florida
Moshe Tur: Tel Aviv University
Demetrios N. Christodoulides: Univ. of Southern California
Alan E. Willner: Univ. of Southern California

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Space-time wave packets (STWPs) with correlated spatial and frequency degrees of freedom exhibit time-dependent spatial interference, thereby giving rise to interesting dynamic evolution behaviors. While versatile spatiotemporal phenomena have been demonstrated in freely propagating fields, coupling spatiotemporal light into multimode fibers remains a fundamental experimental challenge. Whereas synthesizing freely propagating STWPs typically relies on a continuum of plane-wave modes, their multimode-fiber counterparts must be constructed from the discrete set of fiber modes whose propagation constants depend on fiber structures. Here, we demonstrate STWPs with axially controllable motion of the transverse profile and reconfigurable group velocity in graded-index multimode fibers. This is accomplished by introducing a linear association between frequency comb lines and corresponding fiber modes. The synthesized STWPs present dynamic rotation and translation with a 4.8-ps period. Simultaneously, the group velocity can be tuned from positive subluminal and superluminal to negative values (e.g., 0.870, 1.35, 10, and –3.3 × 108 m/s, respectively).

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56982-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-56982-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56982-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().