Generation of High-Quality Tunable One-Dimensional Airy Beams Using the Aberrations of a Single Lens

We designed a highly tunable optical system for generating very good quality 1-D optical Airy beams. The system is composed of only a few passive elements-a microscope objective, a lens, and an aperture stop-so it is easy to align and has no power limits. An analytical formula for the characteristic coefficient of Airy beams was obtained as a function of two control parameters (object position and tilt angle of the lens), showing that it is possible to obtain a wide range of values, from a few micrometers to over 200 μm using the same elements, simply by varying the geometric parameters of this optical system.