2026-06-29T15:18:00Zhttps://docta.ucm.es/rest/oai/request

oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/242262023-08-26T18:55:49Zcom_20.500.14352_14col_20.500.14352_15

Caustics, catastrophes, and symmetries in curved beams Vaveliuk, Pablo Lencina, Alberto Rodrigo Martín-Romo, José Augusto Martínez Matos, Óscar 535 Airy beams Phase Óptica (Física) 2209.19 Óptica Física ©2015 American Physical Society. Project TEC2014-57394-P (Spain) and CNPq 311741/2014-2 (Brazil) are acknowledged. 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. Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), España Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Brasil Depto. de Óptica Fac. de Ciencias Físicas TRUE pub 2023-06-18T06:48:00Z 2023-06-18T06:48:00Z 2015-09-28 journal article https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/24226 1050-2947 10.1103/PhysRevA.92.033850 eng 311741/2014-2 TEC2014-57394-P open access application/pdf American Physical Society