Specular and vortical Airy beams

A new kind of truncated Airy beams is investigated and discussed. These beams are a superposition of shifted and truncated Airy functions and its specular counterparts, where zeroes or extremal points of the Airy function are chosen as a truncation point. The specular Airy beams are smooth at the truncation point and produce a diffraction pattern similar to Hermite-Gaussian modes. Under propagation in Fresnel zone, specular Airy beams demonstrate a symmetrical acceleration in opposite sides and the beam divergence is proportional to the traveled distance squared. The astigmatic mode converter transforms a two-dimensional specular Airy beam into a quasi-annular field with a nonzero orbital angular momentum. Vortical Airy beams based on truncated Airy functions are also discussed. These beams are similar to Laguerre-Gaussian modes, while their annular structure is changed during propagation. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.