RT Journal Article
T1 Caustics, catastrophes, and symmetries in curved beams
A1 Vaveliuk, Pablo
A1 Lencina, Alberto
A1 Rodrigo Martín-Romo, José Augusto
A1 Martínez Matos, Óscar
AB In this paper, a meaningful classification of optical caustic beams in two dimensions is presented. It is demonstrated that the phase symmetry of the beam's angular spectrum governs the optical catastrophe, which describes the wave properties of ray singularities, for cusp (symmetric phase) and fold (antisymmetric phase) caustics. In contrast to the established idea, the caustic classification arises from the phase symmetry rather than from the phase power, thus breaking the commonly accepted concept that fold and cusp caustics are related to the Airy and Pearcey functions, respectively. Nevertheless, the role played by the spectral phase power is to control the degree of caustic curvature. These findings provide straightforward engineering of caustic beams by addressing the spectral phase into a spatial light modulator or glass plate.
PB American Physical Society
SN 1050-2947
YR 2015
FD 2015-09-28
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/24226
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/24226
LA eng
NO ©2015 American Physical Society. Project TEC2014-57394-P (Spain) and CNPq 311741/2014-2 (Brazil) are acknowledged.
NO Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), España
NO Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brasil
DS Docta Complutense
RD 25 abr 2025