Abstract
Self-accelerating optical beams form as a direct outcome of interference, initiated by a predesigned initial condition. In a similar fashion, quantum mechanical particles exhibit force-free acceleration as a result of interference effects following proper preparation of the initial Schrodinger wave function. Indeed, interference is at the heart of such wave packets, and hence it is implied that self-accelerating wave packets must be coherent entities. Counter to that, we demonstrate theoretically and experimentally spatially incoherent self-accelerating beams, in both the paraxial and the nonparaxial domains. We show that in principle, the transverse correlation distance can be as short as a single wavelength, while a properly designed initial beam will give rise to shape-preserving acceleration for the same distance as a coherent accelerating beam propagating on the same trajectory. These findings expand the understanding of the relation between coherence and accelerating beams, and may have implications for the design of self-accelerating quantum wave packets with limited quantum coherence.
Highlights
INTRODUCTIONThe field of accelerating wave packets has attracted extensive research interest in the last several years, since the concept of Airy wave packets (first formulated in quantum mechanics [1]) was introduced into optics [2,3]
The field of accelerating wave packets has attracted extensive research interest in the last several years, since the concept of Airy wave packets was introduced into optics [2,3]
In the regime of small angles, proper design of the initial amplitude and phase can generate a beam that propagates along a parabolic trajectory while maintaining a shape-preserving Airy profile. Such self-bending beams have led to many intriguing applications in the past several years, including particle manipulations [4,5], curved plasma channels [6], Airy plasmons [7,8,9], single-molecule imaging using the curved point-spread function [10], light-sheet microscopy using Airy beams [11], and even accelerating electron beams in electron microscopes [12]
Summary
The field of accelerating wave packets has attracted extensive research interest in the last several years, since the concept of Airy wave packets (first formulated in quantum mechanics [1]) was introduced into optics [2,3]. Accelerating wave packets were proposed [2] and demonstrated [19,20] in the temporal domain, where shape-preserving pulses accelerate for long distances in dispersive media (fibers) until causality causes their breakup [21] This concept was recently generalized to the full Maxwell equations [22], thereby enabling large bending angles close to 180° and features on the scale of a single wavelength [23,24,25,26]. We provide explicit criteria for maintaining the acceleration despite the incoherence, and suggest applications, such as particle manipulation along curved paths [4,5,26], that could benefit greatly when the bending beams are partially incoherent These findings may be beneficial for the design of self-accelerating quantum wave packets with limited quantum coherence
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