Generation of Optical Accelerating Quinary-Cusp Beams and Their Optical Characteristics

By designing pivotal phase-only masks based on canonical catastrophe theory, finite-energy optical quinary-cusp beams are experimentally generated for the first time. Such beams are a kind of new accelerating beams having five sampling points. Their optical topological structures and propagation characteristics are investigated subsequently. Moreover, we also find that the acceleration of quinary-cusp beams can be controlled by changing the Fourier transform lens with the different local lengths. Such research results are believed to pave the way toward future potential scientific applications of quinary-cusp beams.