Molding light in space and time: novel phenomena and applications

Recent advances in wavefront shaping have led to new classes of structured light; hence, uncovering novel phenomena and facilitating new applications. We review recent progress in these areas and highlight our efforts in structuring all degrees of freedom of light; including the phase, amplitude, polarization state, and orbital angular momentum of light both in three-dimensional space and time. Notably, we showcase scenarios in which the propagation dynamics of structured vector beams are governed by a topological phase factor (i.e., the Berry phase) in addition to the regular propagation phase. This in turn redefines basic phenomena in optics encountered by these beams; such as Snell’s law, phase matching and resonance conditions. We finally present new directions in creating time-varying near-field structures using frequency-gradient plasmonic based devices.