Non-diffractive beam generation with partially blocked annular beam in scattering media

Abstract

Laser beam propagation in highly scattering media has attracted much attention for optical sensing fields because the propagation of the light is often limited to the near-surface regions of the media. To increase the sensing capability in such scattering conditions, we focus on the propagation property of an annular beam in a highly scattering media. In our previous work, the non-diffractive beam was generated by propagating an annular beam in a scattering medium of colloidal suspension (diluted milk) up to the concentration of 22%, which is near the human tissue. In this study, the propagation property of a partially blocked annular beam using a fan-like obstacle with different apex angles is investigated to realize object detection in highly scattering media such as human tissue, fog, or cloud. Simulation results show that non-diffractive beams can be generated when partially blocked annular beam with blocking angle from 0° to 30o is propagated in free space. The propagation experiment of partially blocked annular beam in scattering media shows that the center peak intensity in scattered light is detected when the apex angle is set up to 30° . By measuring scattered light at different receiving distances, the experiment results show that the center peak is kept at a certain distance away from the optical cell. This result verifies that the central peak intensity of this scattered light is a non-diffractive beam.