Optica Incubator on Spatiotemporal Structuring of Light

Optical fields are described in terms of their spatial, temporal, and polarization degrees of freedom (DoFs), which are usually modulated independently of each other. This is the foundation of the separate fields of optical beams, ultrafast pulses, and vector fields. The past five years have witnessed a paradigm shift, whereby the insights developed in these fields are merging to lay the foundation for spatiotemporally structured light, in which the spatial, temporal, and polarization DoFs are modulated jointly. New optical field structures have rapidly emerged, unexpected propagation behaviors have been observed, and novel interactions of such optical fields with photonic devices have been investigated. A plethora of applications are anticipated as these concepts are further explored and their foundations established.