The Talbot effect, epitomized by periodic revivals of a freely evolving periodic field structure, has been observed with waves of diverse physical nature in space and separately in time, whereby diffraction underlies the former and dispersion underlies the latter. To date, a combined spatiotemporal Talbot effect has not been realized in any wave field because diffraction and dispersion are independent physical phenomena, typically unfolding at incommensurable length scales. Here, we report the observation of an optical “space–time” Talbot effect, whereby a spatiotemporal optical lattice structure undergoes periodic revivals after suffering the impact of both diffraction and dispersion. The discovered space–time revivals are governed by a single self-imaging length scale, which encompasses both spatial and temporal degrees of freedom. Key to this effect is the identification of a unique pulsed optical field structure, which we refer to as a V-wave, that is endowed with intrinsically equal diffraction and dispersion lengths in free space, thereby enabling self-imaging to proceed in lockstep in space and time.

中文翻译：

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时空塔尔博特效应

塔尔博特效应以自由演化的周期性场结构的周期性复兴为缩影，已经在空间和时间上不同物理性质的波中观察到，其中衍射是前者的基础，而色散是后者的基础。迄今为止，尚未在任何波场中实现组合时空塔尔博特效应，因为衍射和色散是独立的物理现象，通常在不可公度的长度尺度上展开。在这里，我们报告了对光学“时空”塔尔博特效应的观察，其中时空光学晶格结构在受到衍射和色散的影响后会经历周期性的恢复。发现的时空复兴受单一自成像长度尺度的控制，该尺度包括空间和时间自由度。