Accelerating Airy beams with particle-like polarization topologies and free-space bimeronic lattices.

Abstract

Phase and polarization singularities in electromagnetic waves are usually attributed to one-dimensional topologies-lines, knots, and braids. Recently, particle-like structures have been predicted and observed: optical Skyrmions, vortices with spherical polarization, etc. In this article, we devise vector Airy beams with point-like singularity in the focal plane, thus leading to the presence of a particle-like topology. We present an extensive analytical analysis of the spatial spectra and focal structure of such beams. We report on the presence of a free-space lattice of bimerons in such vector Airy beams.