Airy beam

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An Airy beam is a non-diffracting waveform which gives the appearance of curving as it travels.

Physical Description

A cross section of an Airy beam would reveal an area of principal intensity, with a series of adjacent, less luminous areas trailing off to infinity. In real applications, the beam is truncated so as to have a finite composition.

As the beam propagates, it does not diffract, i.e., does not spread out. The Airy beam also has the characteristic of freely accelerating. As it propagates, it bends so as to form a parabolic arc.

History

The term "Airy beam" derives from the Airy integral, developed in the 1830s by Sir George Biddell Airy to explain optical caustics such as those appearing in a rainbow.^[1]

The Airy waveform was first theorized in 1979 by M. V. Berry and N. L. Balz. They demonstrated a nonspreading Airy wave packet solution to the Schrödinger equation.^[2]

In 2007 researchers from the University of Central Florida were able to create and observe an Airy beam for the first time in both one- and two-dimensional configurations. The members of the team were Georgios Siviloglou, John Broky, Aristide Dogariu, and Demetrios Christodoulides.^[1]

Mathematical Description

The potential free Schrödinger equation:

Has the following Airy nondispersive solution:^[3]

where

• is the airy function.
• is the electric field envelope
• represents a dimensionless traverse coordinate
• is an arbitrary traverse scale
• is a normalized propagation distance
• 

Experimental Observation

Georgios Sivilioglou, et al. successfully fabricated an Airy beam in 2007. A beam with a Gaussian distribution was modulated by a spatial light modulator to have an Airy distribution. The result was recorded by a CCD camera.^[1]

Applications

Researchers at the University of St. Andrews have used Airy beams to manipulate small particles, moving them along curves and around corners. This may find use in fields such as microfluidic engineering and cell biology.^[4]

See also

Bessel beam

Notes and references

5. http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-18-8-8440

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