We demonstrate both experimentally and theoretically controlled acceleration of one- and two-dimensional Airy beams in optically induced refractive-index potentials. Enhancement as well as reduction of beam acceleration are realized by changing the index gradient, while the beam shape is maintained during propagation through the linear optical potential. Our results of active acceleration manip...

We propose that classical random matrix models are properly viewed as finite difference schemes for stochastic differential operators. Three particular stochastic operators commonly arise, each associated with a familiar class of local eigenvalue behavior. The stochastic Airy operator displays soft edge behavior, associated with the Airy kernel. The stochastic Bessel operator displays hard edge...

We observe optical trapping and manipulation of dielectric microparticles using autofocusing radially symmetric Airy beams. This is accomplished by exploiting either the inward or outward transverse acceleration associated with their chirped wavefronts. We experimentally demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that such Airy beams morph into nondiffracting Bessel beams in their far-fi...

Soliton propagation direction can be engineered in optical fibers in the presence of high-order effects (HOEs). It is well known that Raman effects can decelerate the soliton. Here we investigate the manipulation of the deceleration or acceleration of soliton emitted from Airy pulse whose spectrum is imposed an initial quadratic phase modulation (QPM) in optical fibers in the absence of HOEs. W...

Conventional microparticle transports by light or sound are realized along a straight line. Recently, this limit has been overcome in optics as the growing up of the self-accelerating Airy beams, which are featured by many peculiar properties, e.g., bending propagation, diffraction-free and self-healing. However, the bending angles of Airy beams are rather small since they are only paraxial sol...

We report on an approach to generate non-diffractive and non-dispersive Airy3 bullets with enhanced spatio-temporal energy confinement. By appropriately reshaping the initial spectral components in the Fourier domain, the resulting optical bullets show a significant enhancement of their central lobe intensity while exhibiting a reduced spatio-temporal outspread of the surrounding sub...

Negative propagation is an unusual effect concerning the local sign change in the Poynting vector components of an optical beam under free propagation. We report this effect for finite-energy Airy beams in a subwavelength nonparaxial regime. This effect is due to a coupling process between propagating and evanescent plane waves forming the beam in the spectral domain and it is demonstrated for ...

In last passage percolation models lying in the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang universality class, maximizing paths that travel over distances of order $n$ accrue energy fluctuates on scale $n^{1/3}$; and these deviate from linear interpolation their endpoints $n^{2/3}$. These energies may be viewed via a coordinate system respects scalings. What emerges by doing so is indexed $x,y\in \mathbb{R}$ $s,t\in ...