Supercontinuum Airy beams

Airy beams are of great interest as a result of their unusual characteristics, they are non-diffracting and also propagate along a parabolic path due to the presence of a transversal acceleration component. In this paper the generation of a white light Airy beam is presented, an investigation is also carried out to determine how the properties of an Airy beam change with the wavelength and spatial coherence of the source. A supercontinuum source is used in conjunction with a spatial light modulator to produce the Airy beams. The wavelength dependence study of the Airy beam parameters was carried out by inserting interference filters into the supercontinuum beam path to select each wavelength. The parameters investigated are the deflection coefficient of the Airy beam, b0, this quantifies the parabolic path traveled by the beam; the characteristic length, x0, which is related to the lobe spacing, and lastly the aperture coefficient, a0. The deflection coefficient and the characteristic length were both found to be wavelength dependent. The aperture coefficient did not alter as a result of wavelength, however it was found to be dependent on the spatial coherence, and therefore on the M2 value, of the beam. The other parameters, b0 and x0, are unaffected by the spatial coherence of the source.

[1]  Robert R. Alfano,et al.  The Poynting vector and angular momentum of Airy beams. , 2008 .

[2]  A Dogariu,et al.  Observation of accelerating Airy beams. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[3]  Z. Bouchal,et al.  Self-reconstruction of a distorted nondiffracting beam , 1998 .

[4]  J. Durnin.  Exact solutions for nondiffracting beams. I. The scalar theory , 1987 .

[5]  J. P. Woerdman,et al.  Orbital angular momentum of light and the transformation of Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes. , 1992, Physical review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics.

[6]  Demetrios N. Christodoulides,et al.  Observation of accelerating Airy beams. , 2007 .

[7]  Kishan Dholakia,et al.  Light-induced cell separation in a tailored optical landscape , 2005 .

[8]  A Dogariu,et al.  Ballistic dynamics of Airy beams. , 2008, Optics letters.

[9]  Carlos J Zapata-Rodríguez,et al.  Diffraction-free beams in thin films. , 2010, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision.

[10]  Qingsheng He,et al.  Propagation and imaging experiments with Gaussian Schell-model beams , 1988 .

[11]  G. G. Stokes.  "J." , 1890, The New Yale Book of Quotations.

[12]  Michael V Berry,et al.  Nonspreading wave packets , 1979 .

[13]  D. Christodoulides,et al.  Accelerating finite energy Airy beams. , 2007, Optics letters.

[14]  D. Christodoulides,et al.  Self-healing properties of optical Airy beams. , 2008, Optics express.

[15]  Jörg Baumgartl,et al.  Optically mediated particle clearing using Airy wavepackets , 2008 .

[16]  He,et al.  Direct observation of transfer of angular momentum to absorptive particles from a laser beam with a phase singularity. , 1995, Physical review letters.