Optical fields with tunable transverse intensity fluxes arranged over a semi-circle

摘要

Accelerating and Airy beams are of great interest in a variety of applications as they remain diffraction free while experiencing a transverse quadratic shift along propagation, transporting intensity in the transverse plane over a straight line and describing an overall parabolic trajectory in space. This work presents optical fields that transport intensity in the transverse plane over a continuum of directions arranged over a semi-circle, creating transverse intensity fluxes with a variety of shapes. We construct these beams via a superposition of a nondiffracting beam with a strong carrier wave that reproduces phase variations of the former field over the resultant intensity distribution, generating profiles with a finite and well defined propagation period. The on-demand light patterns presented here are expected to find diverse applications as Airy beams and nondiffracting beams have previously found.