Eur. Phys. J. D (2016) 70: 87
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2016-60677-8

Regular Article

Propagation of Airy-Gaussian beams in a chiral medium

¹ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Functional Materials and Devices, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, P.R. China
² CAS Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment, University of Science & Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230026, P.R. China

^a e-mail: dmdeng@263.net

Received: 29 November 2015
Received in final form: 27 February 2016
Published online: 14 April 2016

Abstract

We have expressed and investigated the propagation of Airy-Gaussian beams (AiGBs) in a chiral medium analytically. It is shown that AiGBs split into two components, i.e., the left circularly polarized (LCP) beams and the right circularly polarized (RCP) beams, which have a different propagation trajectory and are affected by the chiral parameter γ and the distribution factor χ₀. It is found that the LCP beams accelerate faster than the RCP beams during propagation, and are influenced by the chiral parameter. With an increase in the chiral parameter, the acceleration of the LCP beams increases, but that of the RCP beams decreases. So, it is significant that we can control the self-acceleration of AiGBs by varying the chiral parameter and the distribution factor.