Counterpropagating interactions of self-focusing Airy beams

Abstract

We study the first experimental collisions of two incoherent self-focused counterpropagating Airy beams in a nonlinear crystal. Their interactions demonstrate that the self-focusing dynamics of the Airy beams can be spatially controlled by the counterpropagating Airy beam. By tuning the misalignment and the size of the beams, we can control the output position of the self-focused Airy beam and switch to multiple outputs. Also the nonlinearity strength enables to engineer the temporal stability of the resulting waveguide structure.