Airy Beam for Free-Space Photonic Interconnection: Generation Strategy and

Trajectory Manipulation

High bandwidth with flexible connectivity is ideally suitable for scaling up the

performance of both outdoor and indoor interconnection applications. The free-space photonic

interconnection offers flexible and large bandwidth connections in three-dimension without

causing interference among the paths of light. Typically, the free-space interconnection light path

is a line-of-sight path that connects the transmitter and the receiver. Over the recent past,

researchers have been drawn into the attention by self-accelerating beams and they have focused

on studying their fascinating localized bending trajectory with peak intensity, and other

characteristics such as self-healing after obstacles in free-space. A flexible three-dimensional

photonic interconnection in free-space can be understood with the curved trajectory of the beams

and the receiver placed along that bending trajectory. Consequently, free-space reach

enhancement can be achieved by self-advancing beams’ main lobe which exhibits diffraction

resistance without clear divergence.

Caustic theory play a major role in the design of self-accelerating beams having arbitrary

trajectories, and the decomposition of beams into Airy function series. The theory used can either

be from real space modulation or Fourier. By taking into account the error in phase modulation

of the spatial light modulator (SLM) and pixel discretization, the beams generated for the Fourier

modulation is higher in quality than those generated for real space modulation because they

occur in far-field. Therefore, Fourier modulation with the use of lens is commonly applied in the

investigation of Airy beam generation. The generation of Airy beam involves phase-type

modulation of Gaussian beam of the spatial light modulator with a cubic-type phase mask. The

Airy beam is obtained by performing the Inverse Fourier Transformation (IFT) by the lens. The
self-accelerating beam’s main lobe possesses most of the beam’s energy and it travels along the

bending trajectory. Therefore, photonic interconnection in free space can be produced by its

bending trajectory with localized power.

The study conducted by Zhu et al (2020) shows that the photonic interconnection keeps

moving the main lobe of the beam in free-space by placing the receiver close to the bending

curve. Nevertheless, it is not always possible to maintain a bending trajectory as that of a

theoretical design. The bending trajectory of experimentally generated beams is in the process of

the transient state due to limitations of aperture and spatial bandwidth. A 3D Airy beam can be

generated by manipulating a 2D Airy beam which is generated mainly by Fourier modulation.

With the increasing propagation distance of free-space, the boundary formed between side and

main lobes disappears and the two lobes merge into a Gauss-shaped beam. As a result, the
evaluation of the self-accelerating beam’s propagation characteristics in free-space and

identification of bending trajectory range requires a metric to guide optimization of free-space

interconnection reach.

REFERENCE

L. Zhu, Z. Yang, S. Fu, Z. Cao, Y. W, Y.Qin, and J. Koonen, “Airy Beam for Free-Space

Photonic Interconnection: Generation Strategy and Trajectory Manipulation”, Journal of

Lightwave Technology, vol. 38, no. 23, Dec. 2020.