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arXiv · 1703.07716

Optical catastrophes of the swallowtail and butterfly beams

Alessandro Zannotti·Falko Diebel·Martin Boguslawski·Cornelia Denz
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Abstract

We experimentally realize higher-order catastrophic structures in light fields to access the rich class of caustic swallowtail and butterfly beams. These beams present solutions of paraxial diffraction catastrophe integrals that are determined by potential functions, whose singular mapping manifests as caustic hypersurfaces in control parameter space. We systematically analyze the swallowtail and butterfly beams' caustics analytically and observe their field distributions experimentally in real and Fourier space. Their spectra can be described by polynomials or expressions with rational exponents capable to form a cusp.

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Alessandro Zannotti, Falko Diebel, Martin Boguslawski, Cornelia Denz. 2017-03-22. Optical catastrophes of the swallowtail and butterfly beams. https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630%2Faa6ecd

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