Structured light as a versatile photonic tool
Résumé
Recent advances in laser technology give us unprecedented control over spatio-temporal properties of light. Here I will show two examples of how one can exploit such structured light. First, I will focus on THz emission from ionizing multi-color femtosecond pulses in gas. The properties of the generated THz radiation are extremely sensitive to the pump pulse configuration, thus it appears possible to tailor via the pump pulse configuration. For the second example I will switch to material processing with intense femtosecond laser pulses. By spatio-temporal shaping of the driving pulse one can optimize the energy deposition in the material, relevant to, e.g., fs-surgery in ophthalmology.