Generation and control of tornado waves by means of ring swallowtail vortex beams

Abstract

Tornado waves (ToWs), which refer to a light that accelerates and twists over both the radial and the angular directions, have gained a great deal of interest since the concept was introduced by Brimis et al [Opt. Lett. 45, 280 (2020)10.1364/OL.45.000280]. In this paper, we superimpose two pairs of ring swallowtail vortex beams (RSVBs) to generate ToWs and we call them tornado swallowtail waves (ToSWs). Each pair consists of RSVBs while carrying orbital angular momentum of opposite helicity and slightly different with the radius of the main ring of RSVBs. The waves spiral forward and reveal intensity maxima, exhibiting a tornado-like intensity profile during propagation. Meanwhile, the angular acceleration of the ToSWs is illustrated via tracing the angular position of the high-intensity main lobes. It is found that ToSWs present very high values of angular acceleration. Compared with typical tornado waves, ToSWs are more diverse and tunable, giving a new degree of freedom to tailor the propagation dynamics due to the flexibility of the swallowtail diffraction catastrophe. In addition, we confirm such waves experimentally and the results match well with the numerical ones. Also, we demonstrate the ability of optical manipulation of ToSWs for the first time in that they allow for particles not only to be trapped but also to be rotated. Finally, we analyze the poynting vectors and power exchange of ToSWs to demonstrate convincingly the physical mechanism.