Caustic design in periodic lattices

Abstract

We study curved trajectory dynamics and design in discrete array settings. We find that beams with power law phases produce curved caustics associated with the fold and cusp type catastrophes. A parabolic phase produces a focus that suffers from spherical aberrations. More important, we find that by designing the initial phase or wavefront of the beam we can construct trajectories with pure power law caustics as well as aberration-free focusing of discrete waves.