Optical combs and optical vortices combined for spatiotemporal manipulation of light and matter

Abstract: In this study, we demonstrate the concept of combining optical combs with optical vortices for the first time. By combining the advantages of the both light sources, we realize an optical vortex comb technology for arbitrary spatiotemporal phase manipulation. This idea corresponds to simultaneous control of the longitudinal and transverse modes of light based on the high controllability of the optical comb. As a proof-of-concept experiment, we applied an optical vortex comb to the generation and rotational control of a ring-shaped optical lattice. Furthermore, to demonstrate the utility of this technique, a rotational optical manipulation of microspheres was demonstrated using the optical ring lattice as an optical tweezer light. Here, we present a new applicability of the optical comb by utilizing its characteristics far beyond the conventional range.