title: Accelerating Self-Imaging: The Airy-Talbot Effect.
abstract: We present a new type of self-imaging phenomenon: self-imaging along curved trajectories. Unlike the Talbot effect, where self-imaging occurs for periodic wave patterns propagating along a straight line, here the field is generally not periodic and is self-imaged along curved trajectories. In the paraxial regime, self-imaging along a parabolic trajectory can ideally go on indefinitely. In the nonparaxial regime the self-imaging is along a circular trajectory and lasts as long as the beam bends. We demonstrate this accelerating self-imaging effect experimentally, and discuss generalizations to higher dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Yaakov
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lumer
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Lee
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Drori
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Yoav
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Hazan
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
authors.forename: Mordechai
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Segev