Creating Airy beams employing a transmissive spatial light modulator

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Wavefront Shaping
• Beam Generation

Background:

• Conventional generation of optical Airy beams often requires bulky setups with physical lenses.
• Spatial Light Modulators (SLMs) are versatile tools for optical wavefront manipulation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and investigate two novel, lens-free methods for generating optical Airy beams using transmissive SLMs.
• To characterize the properties of Airy beams produced by these new methods.

Main Methods:

• Method 1: Loading a numerical lens phase distribution and cubic phase onto an SLM to generate an Airy beam at the focal plane.
• Method 2: Utilizing an SLM between polarizers to achieve negative transmission values for direct Airy function loading, generating an Airy beam immediately behind the SLM.

Main Results:

• Successfully generated optical Airy beams using both novel methods.
• Derived and experimentally validated a formula for the non-quadratic deflection of the intensity maximum for the first method.
• Demonstrated the capability of the second method to generate Airy beams by directly loading the Airy function, leveraging negative transmission values.

Conclusions:

• Both proposed methods provide compact, lens-free alternatives for generating optical Airy beams.
• The first method yields Airy beams with unique deflection characteristics.
• The second method offers a versatile approach for wavefront modulation requiring negative transmission functions.