Reflection and transmission of an Airy beam in a dielectric slab

Abstract The reflection and transmission of a finite-power Airy beam incident in a dielectric slab are investigated by an analytical method. Based on the plane-wave angular spectrum expansion and Fresnel approximation, the analytical expressions of the reflected field, internal field as well as transmitted field in each region are obtained. Through numerical simulations, the intensity distributions of the incident beam, reflected beam, internal beam as well as transmitted beam are presented at oblique incidence. Besides, we also compare the intensity distributions of the geometrical-optics beam field, the first order beam mode field and the actual beam field, which indicates that the contribution of each order beam mode field to the actual beam field is related to the refractive index of the dielectric slab. Meanwhile, the reflection characteristics of the Airy beams in the special cases of Brewster incidence and total reflection are investigated. Finally, the effects of the optical thickness and refractive index of the dielectric slab on the peak intensity distributions and beam shifts of the reflected and transmitted beams are also discussed in detail. The analytical and numerical results will be useful to analyze the propagation dynamics of Airy beam in the dielectric slab and provide some theoretical supports to the design of optical film.