Generation and control of accelerating airy beams in nonlinear photonic crystals

Nonlinear optics offers interesting possibilities for generation, manipulation and mixing of Airy beams. For generating an Airy beam, we manipulate first the Fourier transform of the beam, which is characterized by cubic phase dependence. The authors have designed and fabricated a special asymmetric nonlinear photonic crystal in stoichiometric LiTaO₃, having periodic modulation of the quadratic nonlinear coefficient in the propagation direction (for efficient quasi-phase matched frequency conversion) and cubic modulation in the transverse direction (thereby adding a transverse cubic phase). This nonlinear photonic crystal was used to generate an Airy beam by frequency doubling a Nd:YLF pump laser and Fourier transforming its output using a lens.