Sculpting light in space and time can provide unprecedented opportunities in many areas of science and technology, ranging from extreme nonlinear optics and quantum networks to new families of ultrafast fibre amplifiers. Although endeavours in accessing the light’s temporal and spatial degrees of freedom have been carried out, controlling the electromagnetic field in its entirety has always been a major challenge. Here we demonstrate a versatile approach to synthesize convoluted ultrafast light structures in which the spatial and temporal dimensions are precisely correlated. By utilizing a two-stage reconfigurable module, we produce separable and non-separable trains of ultrafast wavepackets with time-varying dynamic angular momentum and tailored spectral characteristics. The generated light states are observed using mode- and frequency-resolved tomographic methodologies capable of reconstructing their complex field structure in space and time. Our results could have ramifications in a broad range of applications such as high-resolution microscopy, high-harmonic generation and laser micromachining.

在空间和时间中雕刻光可以在许多科学技术领域提供前所未有的机会，从极端非线性光学和量子网络到新的超快光纤放大器系列。尽管已经进行了获取光的时间和空间自由度的努力，但控制整个电磁场一直是一项重大挑战。在这里，我们展示了一种合成卷积超快光结构的通用方法，其中空间和时间维度精确相关。通过利用两级可重构模块，我们产生了具有随时间变化的动态角动量和定制光谱特性的可分离和不可分离的超快波包序列。使用能够在空间和时间上重建其复杂场结构的模式和频率分辨断层扫描方法观察生成的光状态。我们的结果可能会在广泛的应用中产生影响，例如高分辨率显微镜、高谐波产生和激光微加工。