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Optics and Photonics News 12/2012; 23(12):26.
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ABSTRACT: We present the nondiffracting spatially accelerating solutions of the Maxwell equations. Such beams accelerate in a circular trajectory, thus generalizing the concept of Airy beams to the full domain of the wave equation. For both TE and TM polarizations, the beams exhibit shape-preserving bending which can have subwavelength features, and the Poynting vector of the main lobe displays a turn of more than 90°. We show that these accelerating beams are self-healing, analyze their properties, and find the new class of accelerating breathers: self-bending beams of periodically oscillating shapes. Finally, we emphasize that in their scalar form, these beams are the exact solutions for nondispersive accelerating wave packets of the most common wave equation describing time-harmonic waves. As such, this work has profound implications to many linear wave systems in nature, ranging from acoustic and elastic waves to surface waves in fluids and membranes.
Physical Review Letters 04/2012; 108(16):163901. · 7.37 Impact Factor
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[show abstract]
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ABSTRACT: We present the nondiffracting spatially accelerating solutions of the Maxwell equations. Such beams accelerate in a circular trajectory, thus generalizing the concept of Airy beams to the full domain of the wave equation. For both TE and TM polarizations, the beams exhibit shape-preserving bending which can have subwavelength features, and the Poynting vector of the main lobe displays a turn of more than 90°. We show that these accelerating beams are self-healing, analyze their properties, and find the new class of accelerating breathers: self-bending beams of periodically oscillating shapes. Finally, we emphasize that in their scalar form, these beams are the exact solutions for nondispersive accelerating wave packets of the most common wave equation describing time-harmonic waves. As such, this work has profound implications to many linear wave systems in nature, ranging from acoustic and elastic waves to surface waves in fluids and membranes.
Physical Review Letters 04/2012; · 7.37 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: 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.
12/2011;
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ABSTRACT: We find self-accelerating beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear optical media, and show that their propagation dynamics is strongly affected by boundary conditions. Specifically for the thermal optical nonlinearity, the boundary conditions have a strong impact on the beam trajectory: they can increase the acceleration during propagation, or even cause beam bending in a direction opposite to the initial trajectory. Under strong self-focusing, the accelerating beam decomposes into a localized self-trapped beam propagating on an oscillatory trajectory and a second beam which accelerates in a different direction. We augment this study by investigating the effects caused by a finite aperture and by a nonlinear range of a finite extent.
Optics Express 11/2011; 19(24):23706-15. · 3.59 Impact Factor
