Optics and Photonics Society of Iran

Airy beams are a new kind of non-diffracting beams with peculiar properties such as curved trajectory and self-healing. The most important factor to generate these beams is to imprint a spatial third-order phase on an initially Gaussian beam in the Fourier domain. Various methods have been used for this purpose. Among which utilizing the coma aberration is found to be the most appropriate because of providing tunable continuous phase induction, capability of working at high laser powers and low-cost. In this work, a new cylindrical telescopic system composed of two positive lenses is introduced for the generation of third-order spatial phase. Using this system, one- and two-dimensional Airy beams are generated and their propagation properties such as the curved trajectory and self-healing are studied experimentally. Moreover, the tunability of the method for the generation of a controlled amount of third-order phase is verified by two independent wave front sensing approaches: Moiré deflectometry and phase shifting interferometry. The results of the two methods are in a good agreement.