Abstract

We derive the initial distributions of phase and complex amplitude of accelerating beams with arbitrary predesigned hyperbolic trajectories using the caustic-design method and explore the relation between these beams and Hermite–Gaussian beams. The results show the hyperbolic accelerating beams are a larger class of beams than Hermite–Gaussian beams. When the bending parameter is an integer, the hyperbolic accelerating beams have a similar initial complex amplitude distribution and almost the same propagating characteristics as Hermite–Gaussian beams. Through the analysis of the ray-based method, we also derive an approximate expression for the initial complex amplitude of Hermite–Gaussian beams after introducing an amplitude distribution function. Although the proposed approximate expressions of complex amplitude are more complex than the usually used Hermite–Gaussian function, they explicitly indicate the information on local amplitude, wave vector, and internal ray structure (including caustics) of these beams and thus provide us clearer geometrical insights into these beams.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

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