Airy beam laser

A method to design lasers that emit an arbitrary beam profile is studied. In these lasers, output-coupling is performed by a diffraction grating that imposes a phase and amplitude distribution onto the diffracted light. A solid-state laser emitting beams with a two-dimensional Airy intensity profile is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. In this case, the diffraction grating adds a transverse cubic phase to the diffracted light. An Airy beam is obtained by performing optical Fourier transformof the out-coupled light. The laser beam profile and power characteristics are shown to agree with theory. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America