Self-healing properties of optical Airy beams

• DOI: 10.1364/oe.16.012880
• Publication Date: 2008-08-08T16:31:14Z
• Authors: John Broky; Georgios A. Sivil...; Aristide Dogariu; Demetrios N. Chri...
• Keywords: Light; Optics; DIFFRACTION; Models, Theoretical; 01 natural sciences; TRANSFORMATION; Refractometry; LIGHT; Nephelometry and Turbidimetry; 0103 physical sciences; Computer Simulation; ANGULAR-MOMENTUM

We investigate both theoretically and experimentally the self-healing properties of accelerating Airy beams. We show that this class of waves tends to reform during propagation in spite of the severity of the imposed perturbations. In all occasions the reconstruction of these beams is interpreted through their internal transverse power flow. The robustness of these optical beams in scattering and turbulent environments is also studied experimentally. Our observations are in excellent agreement with numerical simulations.