Bounded one-dimensional Airy beams: laser fan

Recently [Siviloglou G. A., et al, Physical Review Letters 99, 213901 (2007)] a new type of laser beams have been physically implemented, namely, the exponential Airy beams which approximately retain their strucutre at a certain distance upon propagation in free space, with the propagation path of the major maximum being deflected. The intensity pattern of the propagating beam looks like a rainbow. We consider another type of bounded Airy beams, which are generated in the transverse cross-section of the whispering gallery mode resonator. A numerical comparison is made between the propagation of the bounded Airy beams, the exponential Airy beams, and Airy-Gaussian beams. The beam under study is shown to manifest higher immunity to diffraction and retain the oscillating structure of an ideal distribution. However it should be noted that the intensity pattern that these beams produce looks more like a fan rather than a rainbow.