2D Exotic Optical Lattice via a Digital-Coding Circular Airy Beam

Optical lattices have been widely used from classical to quantum physics. The tunable and scalable fabrication of lattices would be of great significance in lattice-based multipartite applications. This work demonstrates first that a circular Airy beam (CAB), which has the peculiar properties of self-healing and abrupt autofocusing, can be used to generate two-dimensional (2D) optical lattices in propagation when encoded by a programmable spatial mask, resulting in the formation of large-scale and tunable optical lattices with both axis and axial symmetry, and even high-orbital kaleidoscope shapes. The efficient diffraction of CAB during the spatial crosstalk with the mask enables the realization of tunable lattices with rich periodicity and complexity. The study shows a flexible method to manipulate lattices with large-scale and versatile structures for potential applications in integrated and scalable optical and photonic devices. Fabrication of the tunable two-dimensional (2D) exotic optical lattice utilizes a single digital-coding circular Airy beam. The study demonstrates a flexible method to steer optical lattices with axis, axial symmetry, and even high orbital kaleidoscope structures for potential applications in integrated and scalable optical and photonic devices.image (c) 2023 WILEY-VCH GmbH