Experimental demonstration of a light beam with superior aberration resilience

In this Letter, we present the experimental results of a focused light beam that exhibits superior resilience to various common monochromatic aberrations. The light beam, obtained by applying a helical phase mask on an azimuthally polarized beam, has an Airy pattern that is like a circularly symmetric focal spot. Our results show that the beam in the presence of aberrations has better performance in terms of the Strehl ratio and the effect on the radius of the encircled energy relative to a normal linearly polarized or circularly polarized beam. Our experimental results agree well with the corresponding theoretical results.