Observation of abruptly autofocusing waves

Opt Lett. 2011 May 15;36(10):1842-4. doi: 10.1364/OL.36.001842.

Abstract

We report on the experimental observation of abruptly autofocusing waves. This interesting family of wave packets has been realized by using a radially symmetric Airy intensity distribution. As demonstrated in our experiments, these waves can exhibit unusual features, such as the ability to autofocus by following a parabolic trajectory toward their focus.