Two Dimensional Experimental Airy Beam Propagation Behavior in Biased Photorefractive Medium

Abstract

In 1979, in the context of quantum mechanics, Berry and Balazs introduced a new solution to the Shrodinger equation [1], the Airy wave packets. In the optical domain, the first optical Airy beam was realized in 2007 [2]. Even though the optical Airy beam is obtained by truncating the ideal Airy waveform, it retains three interesting properties : a parabolic trajectory (also known as acceleration), little diffraction, and regeneration of the transverse profile. These properties led to a number of interesting applications. In the last ten years the self trapping character of Airy beams in biased nonlinear media has suggested interesting dynamics such as soliton-like behaviors [3, 4, 5]. Most studies are numerical and focus on one-dimensional Airy beams. We show experimental results on the propagation behavior of a two-dimensional Airy beam inside a photorefractive medium.