Second-harmonic generation and the conservation of spatiotemporal orbital angular momentum of light

Abstract

Light with spatiotemporal orbital angular momentum (ST-OAM) is a recently discovered type of structured and localized electromagnetic field. This field carries characteristic space-time spiral phase structure and transverse intrinsic OAM. In this work, we present the generation and characterization of the second-harmonic of ST-OAM pulses. We uncovered the conservation of transverse OAM in a second-harmonic generation process, where the space-time topological charge of the fundamental field is doubled along with the optical frequency. Our experiment thus suggests a general ST-OAM nonlinear scaling rule - analogous to that in conventional OAM of light. Furthermore, we observe that the topology of a second-harmonic ST-OAM pulse can be modified by complex spatiotemporal astigmatism, giving rise to multiple phase singularities separated in space and time. Our study opens a new route for nonlinear conversion and scaling of light carrying ST-OAM with the potential for driving other secondary ST-OAM sources of electromagnetic fields and beyond.