Direct Writing with Tilted-Front Femtosecond Pulses.

Shaping light fields in both space and time provides new degrees of freedom to manipulate light-matter interaction on the ultrafast timescale. Through this exploitation of the light field, a greater appreciation of spatio-temporal couplings in focusing has been gained, shedding light on previously unexplored parameters of the femtosecond light pulse, including pulse front tilt and wavefront rotation. Here, we directly investigate the effect of major spatio-temporal couplings on light-matter interaction and reveal unambiguously that in transparent media, pulse front tilt gives rise to the directional asymmetry of the ultrafast laser writing.

Void-nanograting transition by ultrashort laser pulse irradiation in silica glass.

The structural evolution from void modification to self-assembled nanogratings in fused silica is observed for moderate (NA > 0.4) focusing conditions. Void formation, appears before the geometrical focus after the initial few pulses and after subsequent irradiation, nanogratings gradually occur at the top of the induced structures.

Direct measurement of the quantum wavefunction.

The wavefunction is the complex distribution used to completely describe a quantum system, and is central to quantum theory. But despite its fundamental role, it is typically introduced as an abstract element of the theory with no explicit definition. Rather, physicists come to a working understanding of the wavefunction through its use to calculate measurement outcome probabilities by way of the Born rule.