Guided Self-Accelerating Airy Beams—A Mini-Review

Abstract

Owing to their nondiffracting, self-accelerating, and self-healing properties, Airy beams of different nature have become a subject of immense interest in the past decade. Their interesting properties have opened doors to many diverse applications. Consequently, the questions of how to properly design the spatial manipulation of Airy beams or how to implement them in different setups have become important and timely in the development of various optical devices. Here, based on our previous work, we present a short review on the spatial control of Airy beams, including the interactions of Airy beams in nonlinear media, beam propagation in harmonic potential, and the dynamics of abruptly autofocusing Airy beams in the presence of a dynamic linear potential. We demonstrate that, under the guidance of nonlinearity and an external potential, the trajectory, acceleration, structure, and even the basic properties of Airy beams can be adjusted to suit specific needs. We describe other fascinating phenomena observed with Airy beams, such as self-Fourier transformation, periodic inversion of Airy beams, and the appearance of spatial solitons in the presence of nonlinearity. These results have promoted the development of Airy beams, and have been utilized in various applications, including particle manipulation, self-trapping, and electronic matter waves.

Generating asymmetric aberration laser beams with controlled intensity distribution

“…Optical beams with controlled intensity distribution and propagation properties such as robustness against obstructions (self-healing) as well as auto-focusing features are desired for various applications, for example, in imaging, ablation, trapping, guiding the micro-particles, and material processing [1][2][3][4]. Due to their wide applicability, there has been a growing interest in synthesizing such optical beams.…”

Construction of finite non‐diffractive and self‐accelerating laser beams

“…This again is applied in an approximate manner due to the implementation in practical applications. A particular case that showcases all the above‐mentioned properties, and from our perspective, it is the most studied, 2,6–10 is the Airy beam 2 where g is a second‐order polynomial 2–4 …”

Self‐Imaging Effect Based on Airy Beams with Quadratic Phase Modulation

“…In the presence of a harmonic potential, the beam can propagate along a zigzag trajectory in one‐dimensional (1D) and evolve into a breathing ring structure in 2D, in the case of fractional Schrödinger equation . For a thorough reading on the Airy beams and accelerating waves, one can be directed to review articles and references therein . However, these schemes are reliant on the generation of dynamic refractive index potentials, for some complex dynamic potentials, it is difficult to be experimentally realized.…”