Programmable Spatiotemporal Control of Femtosecond Laser Pulses Focused Along Arbitrary Trajectories

Structured ultrashort laser pulses with controlled spatiotemporal properties are a key tool for the study and application of light-matter interactions in fields such as microscopy, laser micro-machining and particle acceleration, among others. We present a theoretical framework and experimental setup that allow programmable spatiotemporal control of laser pulses to drive their intensity peak velocity and time delay along an arbitrary 3D curved trajectory. We also demonstrate that the spatial pulse phase can be prescribed along the target curve enabling the generation of optical vortex pulses. These findings pave a way to create sophisticated structured ultrashort pulses with easily engineered propagation dynamics tailored to the standing application.