Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Nonlinear optics

Engineering Airy beams

Nature Photonics volume 3, pages 374–375 (2009)Cite this article

The demonstration of Airy beam generation and all-optical control by quasi-phase matched nonlinear crystals looks set to help these unique beams realize their exciting potential in applications.

In 1979, Berry and Balazs predicted a new set of solutions to the Schrödinger equation in the form of so-called Airy wave packets. Such wave packets have some unique and fascinating properties; namely, that such a wave propagates without changing its shape and follows a parabolic trajectory in free space (implying apparent acceleration even without the presence of an acting force)1.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Comparison of the power distribution in propagating Gaussian and Airy beams.
Figure 2: Microscope photograph of the nonlinear crystals.

References

  1. Berry, M. V. & Balazs, N. L. Am. J. Phys. 47, 264–267 (1979).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. Siviloglou, G. A., Broky, J., Dogariu, A. & Christodoulides, D. N. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 213901 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  3. Ellenbogen, T., Voloch-Bloch, N., Ganany-Padowicz, A. & Arie, A. Nature Photon. 3, 395–398 (2009).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Broderick, N. G. R., Ross, G. W., Offerhaus, H. L., Richardson, D. J. & Hanna, D. C. Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4345–4348 (2000).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Canalias, C. & Pasiskevicius, V. Nature Photon. 1, 459–462 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Kurtz, J. R., Schober, A. M., Hum, D. S., Saltzman, A. J. & Fejer, M. M. IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 8, 660–664 (2002).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Valdas Pasiskevicius is at the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Roslagstullsbacken 21, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden. vp@laserphysics.kth.se,

    Valdas Pasiskevicius

Authors
  1. Valdas Pasiskevicius
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Pasiskevicius, V. Engineering Airy beams. Nature Photon 3, 374–375 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.107

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2009.107

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing