Direct Generation of Airy Beams at Designed Fourier Planes Using Integrated Airy Phase Plates

Abstract

Featuring extraordinarily curved propagation trajectories, self-accelerating Airy beams have stimulated considerable interests from academic research to practical applications. However, generation of high-quality Airy beams using compact optical devices is still highly desirable. Here we present a design of integrated Airy phase plates (IAPPs) with a miniature size (60 μm × 60 μm × 1.1 μm). In addition, a phase-type Fresnel zone plate (FZP) is incorporated in the phase element to further reduce the system dimension, endowing the IAPPs the ability of directly generating Airy beams without introducing a bulky Fourier transform (FT) lens. The fabrication of IAPPs is facilitated by femtosecond direct laser writing (FsDLW), and the experimentally generated Airy beams are in good agreement with the numerical simulations. Furthermore, the flexible fabrication of IAPPs with different focal lengths is demonstrated, which results in the generation of Airy beams at different Fourier planes as desired. Our design strategy and fabrication methodology of the microscale three-dimensional (3D) phase plates can unfold new capacities of Airy beams for miniaturization applications in fiber optics and in on-chip photonics.