We present an all-optical routing scheme based simultaneously on optically induced photonic structures and the Airy beam family. The presented work utilizes these accelerating beams for the demonstration of an all-optical router with individually addressable output channels. In addition, we are able to activate multiple channels at the same time providing us with an optically induced splitter with configurable outputs. The experimental results are corroborated by corresponding numerical simulations

We investigate discrete nondiffracting beams (DNBs) being the foundation of periodic and quasiperiodic intensity distributions. Besides the number of interfering plane waves, the phase relation among these waves is decisive to form a particular intensity lattice. In this manner, we systematize different classes of DNBs and present similarities as well as differences. As one prominent instance, we introduce the class of sixfold nondiffracting beams, offering four entirely different transverse intensity distributions: in detail, the hexagonal, kagome, and honeycomb pattern, as well as a hexagonal vortex beam. We further extend our considerations to quasiperiodic structures and show the changeover to Bessel beams. In addition, we introduce a highly flexible implementation of the experimental analog of DNBs, namely discrete pseudo-nondiffracting beams, and present locally resolved intensity and phase measurements, which underline the nondiffracting character of the generated wave fields.

We present a new concept for the generation of optical lattice waves. For all four families of nondiffracting beams, we are able to realize corresponding nondiffracting intensity patterns in a single setup. The potential of our approach is shown by demonstrating the optical induction of complex photonic discrete, Bessel, Mathieu and Weber lattices in a nonlinear photorefractive medium. However, our technique itself is very general and can be transferred to optical lattices in other fields such as atom optics or cold gases in order to add such complex optical potentials as a new concept to these areas as well. References 10

We experimentally realize higher-order catastrophic structures in light fields presenting solutions of the paraxial diffraction catastrophe integral. They are determined by potential functions whose singular mapping manifests as caustic hypersurfaces in control parameter space. By addressing different cross-sections in the higher-dimensional control parameter space, we embed swallowtail and butterfly catastrophes with varying caustic structures in the lower-dimensional transverse field distribution. We systematically analyze these caustics analytically and observe their field distributions experimentally in real and Fourier space. Their spectra can be described by polynomials or expressions with rational exponents capable to form a cusp.

Complex reconfigurable 3D photonic quasicrystals (PQCs) are fabricated in nonlinear photorefractive strontium barium niobate by an optical phase engineering‐based single‐step optical induction approach (see image). The approach demonstrates the embedded potential to use these structures as a reconfigurable platform for the investigation of advanced nonlinear light‐matter interaction, or as templates fabricated in various photosensitive materials for photonic bandgap structures.