As a newly discovered type of structured light, a spatiotemporal optical vortex (STOV), which is remarkable for its space–time spiral phase and transverse orbital angular momentum (OAM), has garnered substantial interest. Most previous studies have focused on the generation, characterization, and propagation of STOVs, but their nonlinear frequency conversion remains largely unexplored. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the generation of green and ultraviolet (UV) STOVs by frequency upconversion of a STOV carried near-infrared (NIR) pulse emitted by a high repetition rate Yb-doped fiber laser amplifier system. First, we verify that the topological charge of spatiotemporal OAM (ST-OAM) is doubled along with the optical frequency in the second-harmonic generation (SHG) process, which is visualized by the diffraction patterns of the STOVs in the fundamental and second-harmonic field. Second, the space–time characteristic of NIR STOV is successfully mapped to UV STOV by sum-frequency mixing STOV at 1037 nm and Gaussian beams in the green band. Furthermore, we observe the topological charges of the ST-OAM could be degraded owing to strong space–time coupling and complex spatiotemporal astigmatism of such beams. Our results not only deepen our understanding of nonlinear manipulation of ST-OAM spectra and the generation of STOVs at a new shorter wavelength, but also may promote new applications in both classical and quantum optics.

We report an experimental generation of few-cycle pulses at 53 MHz repetition rate. Femtosecond pulses with pulse duration of 181 fs are firstly generated from an optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Then, the pulses are compressed to sub-three-cycle with a hybrid compressor composed of a commercial single-mode fiber and a pair of prisms, taking advantage of the tunability of the OPO and the numerical simulating of the nonlinear compression system. Our compressed optical pulses possess an ultrabroadband spectrum covering over 470 nm bandwidth (at -10dB), and the output intensity fluctuation of our system is less than 0.8%. These results show that our system can effectively generate few-cycle pulses at a repetition rate of tens of megahertz with excellent long-term stability, which could benefit future possible applications.

Ultrafast visible radiation is of great importance for many applications ranging from spectroscopy to metrology. Because some regions in the visible range are not covered by laser gain media, optical parametric oscillators offer an added value. Besides a high-power broadband laser source, the ability to rapidly tune the frequency of pulses with high-power spectral density offers an extra benefit for experiments such as multicolor spectroscopy or imaging. Here, we demonstrate a broadband, high-power, rapidly tunable femtosecond noncollinear optical parametric oscillator with a signal tuning range of 440–720 nm in the visible range. The oscillator is pumped by the third harmonic of an Yb-fiber laser at 345 nm with a repetition rate of 50.2 MHz. Moreover, the signal wavelength is tuned by changing the cavity length only, and output powers up to 452 mW and pulse durations down to 268 fs are achieved. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of a quickly tunable femtosecond optical parametric oscillator that covers nearly the entire visible spectral range with high output power.

Internal motions in femtosecond soliton molecules provide insight into universal collective dynamics in various nonlinear systems. Here we introduce an orbital-angular-momentum (OAM)-resolved method that maps the relative phase motion within a femtosecond soliton molecule into the rotational movement of the interferometric beam profile of two optical vortices. By this means, long-term relative phase evolutions of doublet and triplet soliton molecules generated in an all-polarization-maintaining mode-locked Er-fiber laser are revealed. This simple and practical OAM-resolved method represents a promising way to directly visualize the complex phase dynamics in a diversity of multisoliton structures.

Optical vortices, which carry orbital angular momentum, offer special capabilities in a host of applications. A single-laser source with dual-beam-mode output may open up new research fields of nonlinear optics and quantum optics. We demonstrate a dual-channel scheme to generate femtosecond, dual-wavelength, and dual-beam-mode tunable signals in the near infrared wavelength range. Dual-wavelength operation is derived by stimulating two adjacent periods of a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal. Pumped by an Yb-doped fiber laser with a Gaussian (l_p = 0) beam, two tunable signal emissions with different beam modes are observed simultaneously. Although one of the emissions can be tuned from 1520 to 1613 nm with the Gaussian (l_s = 0) beam, the other is capable of producing a vortex spatial profile with different vortex orders (l_s = 0 to 2) tunable from 1490 to 1549 nm. The proposed system provides unprecedented freedom and will be an exciting platform for super-resolution imaging, nonlinear optics, multidimensional quantum entanglement, etc.