Structuring Polarization States of Light in Space and Time

Abstract: The spatiotemporal sculpturing of light beams with arbitrary phase and polarization topologies has garnered significant attention in recent years due to its potential to advance optical technologies and reveal novel physical phenomena. Examples of spatiotemporal beams include space-time wave packets, flying donuts, tilted pulse fronts, X-waves, Airy pulses, and spatiotemporal optical vortices. Here, we introduce and demonstrate a new class of spatiotemporal polarization states of light. We propose a generalized spatiotemporal higher-order Poincar\'e sphere and show that these polarization states emerge from the superposition of two orthogonal circular polarization states, each carrying a spatiotemporal optical vortex. Such a choice of the basis enables simultaneous control of the spatial and temporal degrees of freedom of light. Theoretical predictions are experimentally validated using ultrafast femtosecond pulses, revealing how the resulting polarization distributions evolve in both space and time. Finally, we further extend this approach to construct a family of spatiotemporal skyrmionic textures that are localized, topologically nontrivial configurations of the electromagnetic field vector, offering a versatile framework for generating and controlling multidimensional (space and time) structured polarization fields. The ability to create and manipulate diverse forms of spatiotemporal skyrmionic textures opens up new opportunities for studying complex light-matter interaction phenomena, advanced imaging and micromanipulation, and encoding information across both space and time, with potential implications for advanced optical communication and information processing in classical and quantum domains