Janus waves. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We show the existence of a family of waves that share a common interesting property affecting the way these waves propagate and focus. The waves are a superposition of twin waves, which are conjugate to each other under inversion of the propagation direction. In analogy to holography, these twin "real" and "virtual" waves are related, respectively, to the converging and diverging parts of the beam and can be clearly visualized in real space at two distinct foci under the action of a focusing lens. Analytic formulas for the intensity distribution after focusing are derived, while numerical and experimental demonstrations are given for some of the most interesting members of this family, the accelerating Airy and ring-Airy beams.

published proceedings

  • Opt Lett

altmetric score

  • 1.6

author list (cited authors)

  • Papazoglou, D. G., Fedorov, V. Y., & Tzortzakis, S.

citation count

  • 24

complete list of authors

  • Papazoglou, Dimitris G||Fedorov, Vladimir Yu||Tzortzakis, Stelios

publication date

  • October 2016