title: Observation of accelerating Airy beams.
abstract: We report the first observation of Airy optical beams. This intriguing class of wave packets, initially predicted by Berry and Balazs in 1979, has been realized in both one- and two-dimensional configurations. As demonstrated in our experiments, these Airy beams can exhibit unusual features such as the ability to remain diffraction-free over long distances while they tend to freely accelerate during propagation.
authors.affiliation: College of Optics/CREOL, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida 32816, USA.
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Siviloglou
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Broky
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dogariu
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Christodoulides