No Arabic abstract
We demonstrate that beams originating from Fresnel diffraction patterns are self-accelerating in free space. In addition to accelerating and self-healing, they also exhibit parabolic deceleration property, which is in stark contrast to other accelerating beams. We find that the trajectory of Fresnel paraxial accelerating beams is similar to that of nonparaxial Weber beams. Decelerating and accelerating regions are separated by a critical propagation distance, at which no acceleration is present. During deceleration, the Fresnel diffraction beams undergo self-smoothing, in which oscillations of the diffracted waves gradually focus and smooth out at the critical distance.
We present the spatially accelerating solutions of the Maxwell equations. Such non-paraxial beams accelerate in a circular trajectory, thus generalizing the concept of Airy beams. For both TE and TM polarizations, the beams exhibit shape-preserving bending with sub-wavelength features, and the Poynting vector of the main lobe displays a turn of more than 90 degrees. We show that these accelerating beams are self-healing, analyze their properties, and compare to the paraxial Airy beams. Finally, we present the new family of periodic accelerating beams which can be constructed from our solutions.
Numerical simulation of Fresnel diffraction with fast Fourier transform (FFT) is widely used in optics, especially computer holography. Fresnel diffraction with FFT cannot set different sampling rates between source and destination planes, while shifted-Fresnel diffraction can set different rates. However, an aliasing error may be incurred in shifted-Fresnel diffraction in a short propagation distance, and the aliasing conditions have not been investigated. In this paper, we investigate the aliasing conditions of shifted-Fresnel diffraction and improve its properties based on the conditions.
Diffraction-free optical beams propagate freely without change in shape and scale. Monochromatic beams that avoid diffractive spreading require two-dimensional transverse profiles, and there are no corresponding solutions for profiles restricted to one transverse dimension. Here, we demonstrate that the temporal degree of freedom can be exploited to efficiently synthesize one-dimensional pulsed optical sheets that propagate self-similarly in free space. By introducing programmable conical (hyperbolic, parabolic, or elliptical) spectral correlations between the beams spatio-temporal degrees of freedom, a continuum of families of axially invariant pulsed localized beams is generated. The spectral loci of such beams are the reduced-dimensionality trajectories at the intersection of the light-cone with spatio-temporal spectral planes. Far from being exceptional, self-similar axial propagation is a generic feature of fields whose spatial and temporal degrees of freedom are tightly correlated. These one-dimensional `space-time beams can be useful in optical sheet microscopy, nonlinear spectroscopy, and non-contact measurements.
It is observed that a constant unit vector denoted by $mathbf I$ is needed to characterize a complete orthonormal set of vector diffraction-free beams. The previously found diffraction-free beams are shown to be included as special cases. The $mathbf I$-dependence of the longitudinal component of diffraction-free beams is also discussed.
We analytically and numerically study the temporal intensity pattern emerging from the linear or nonlinear evolutions of a single or double phase jump in an optical fiber. The results are interpreted in terms of interferences of the well-known diffractive patterns of a straight edge, strip and slit and a complete analytical framework is provided in terms of Fresnel integrals for the case of purely dispersive evolution. When Kerr nonlinearity affects the propagation, various coherent nonlinear structures emerge according to the regime of dispersion.