Abruptly autofocusing property of circular Airy vortex beams with different initial launch angles

Controlling the trajectory of circular Airy beams (CABs) by negative launch angles would greatly reduce their abruptly autofocusing property. By numerically simulating the propagation of a circular Airy vortex beam with different initial launch angles, we demonstrate in this paper that a larger topological charge of optical vortex (OV) is quite helpful to enhance the abruptly autofocusing property under different launch angles (especially for negative launch angles), without affecting the focal position and trajectory. Two opposite OVs would attract each other and partially overlap in the focal plane of CAB under different launch angles, causing even stronger autofocusing. As the distance between two OVs increases, the focal intensity contrast would decrease, especially for a beam with positive launch angles, whose autofocusing property decreases much more quickly with the distance. (c) 2018 Optical Society of America