Evolution of an Airy beam in a saturated medium

The nonlinear dynamics of an Airy beam in a saturated medium is presented. An analytical expression for the evolution of the Airy beam width in the root-mean-square sense is derived. The novel features of the collapsing beams of an Airy beam in a saturated medium are demonstrated by numerical calculation. These collapsing beams shift laterally and are the main property of the Airy beam. However, the collapsing beam in the major lobe of an Airy beam tends to shift in the opposite direction for conservation of the beam centroid. The location and evolution of the collapsing beams depend strongly on the initial powers. The peak intensities of the collapsing beams oscillate at almost the same intensity in the saturated medium, regardless of their initial powers. These results are useful for manipulating nonlinear wave collapse and multi-filamentation.