State Tomography of Toroidal Light Pulses

Abstract: Toroidal pulses, also known as Focused or Flying Doughnuts (FDs), are few-cycle pulses of doughnut-like topology. Originally proposed by Hellwarth and Nouchi in 1996, they have recently been experimentally realized. Toroidal pulses exhibit intriguing topological features, including skyrmionic field configurations and extensive regions of energy backflow, while their light-matter interactions have been associated with the excitation of toroidal and non-radiating modes in matter. The non-separable nature of toroidal pulses, encompassing both space-time and space-polarization couplings, positions them as promising candidates for robust information and energy transport. However, advancing their fundamental study and deployment in applications requires practical characterization methods, particularly with respect to their non-separability. In this work, we experimentally generate collimated optical toroidal pulses and analyze their space-polarization and space-time couplings using tomographic techniques. We quantify their degree of non-separability through measures such as concurrence and fidelity, benchmarking against ideal FD pulses. The reported results will be of interest to the fundamental study of toroidal pulses and spatiotemporal structured light more broadly, enabling applications in telecommunications, spectroscopy, metrology, and imaging.