Research progress of Airy beam and feasibility analysis for its application in FSO system

As one member of non-diffraction light family, Airy beam has attracted a great deal of interests due to its unique non-diffraction, transverse-accelerating and self-healing properties. And it has potential applications in many fields such as optical micro-particles manipulation, generation of optical bullets, creating curved electron beams, formation of Airy beam lasers and so on. This paper briefly reviews the recent development of Airy beams from four aspects: generating method, controlling of accelerating trajectory, auto-focusing of Airy beams arrays and propagating properties in atmospheric channel. The main methods of Airy beam generation are summarized and a deep analysis for each method is made from the cost of the system, how complex to come true and potential of applications, and give some suggestions for improving and perfecting. It shows that the methods with low cost of the system, easy to come true and the broad application prospect are hoped. This paper summarizes the main methods of Airy beam's propagation trajectory control. And make a analysis for each method controlling principle of propagation trajectory in acceleration direction, self- bending degree, peak intensity position and so on. This paper makes a conclusion of advantages and disadvantages for each method. The research show that the Airy beam's propagation trajectory control method by changing system parameters, that is simple and easily success, but cannot reverse acceleration direction and controlling ranges is limited. The control methods based on refractive-index gradient and the special medium, nonlinear photonic crystals, can reverse acceleration direction but difficultly come true. The acceleration direction and intensity distribution of Airy beam's propagation trajectory can be controlled by the special transform and that easily come true. The research methods of Airy beam and Airy array beams' propagation properties at the atmosphere turbulence are based on the Huygens-Fresnel principle, the multiple phase screens and Perturbation approximation methods and so on. The research show that the propagation properties of Airy beam at atmosphere, which include beams expand, beam drifts and Self focusing ability, are better than Gaussian beams. Furthermore, the properties of Gaussian beam and Airy beam were compared from the view of communication. The feasibility to use Airy beam as information carrier of FSO system was analyzed. As a conclusion, it was pointed out that auto-focusing Airy beams that combined by radial symmetrically distributing arrays cannot only enhance the light intensity at receive plane of FSO system, but also suppress effectively atmospheric effects such as beam spreading, scintillation, beam wander, etc. It would be a promising approach to use auto focusing Airy beams as light source to develop long rang, high bit rate FSO system. © 2016, Science Press. All right reserved.