Analytical study of the self-healing property of Airy beams

Abstract

An analytical expression for the optical field of an Airy beam partially blocked by an opaque obstacle is derived. The self-healing properties of the Airy beam are studied and discussed in detail. The study shows that the self-healing process of the Airy beam is affected by many factors such as the opaque obstacle size, propagation distance, wavelength, and parameters of the Airy beam. The self-healing process is caused by the convergence of energy from the side to the position of the opaque obstacle and is finished when the convergence of energy flow disappears. When the propagation distance is short, the main lobe of the Airy beam is affected by the obstruction located near the main lobe. When the propagation distance is long, the main lobe of the Airy beam can be affected by the obstruction located far away from the main lobe. The result agrees with the existing results and can be explained by the caustic of the Airy beam.

Beam wander of partially coherent Airy beams

“…However, researchers observed a new family of paraxial light beam, the optical Airy beam, in 2007 [1]. Unlike ordinary optical wavefronts, an Airy beam propagates along parabolic trajectories (self-accelerating) [2] and are endowed with nondiffracting and self-healing properties [3,4]. Since then, the Airy beam has been attracting a great deal of interest both in theory and experiment, with applications ranging from clearing optically mediated particles [5], producing self-bending plasma channels [6], and trapping and guiding microparticles [7,8], to electron capture and acceleration drives [9,10], ultrafast self-accelerating pulses [11], and Airy light bullets accelerating in both transverse dimensions and time [12].…”

Dependence of the beam wander of an airy beam on its kurtosis parameter in a turbulent atmosphere

“…More recently, a specific type of non-diffracting beam, namely, the self-accelerating Airy beam was introduced [2] and was experimentally demonstrated in optics by Siviloglou and Christodoulies [3]. In the past years, Airy beams have attracted a great deal of interest due to their unique properties such as propagation along parabolic trajectories (self accelerating) [3], nondiffracting and self-healing [4,5].…”

Quantitative comparison of self-healing ability between Bessel–Gaussian beam and Airy beam

“…Self-healing ability during propagation process is one of the most interesting properties of non-diffracting beams [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. This property makes these beams an interesting candidate for wide applications.…”