Circular symmetric Airy beam with the inverse propagation of the abruptly autofocusing Airy beam

In this letter, we introduce a new class of light beam, the circular symmetric Airy beam (CSAB), which arises from the extensions of the one dimensional (1D) spectrum of Airy beam from rectangular coordinates to cylindrical ones. The CSAB propagates at initial stages with a single central lobe that autofocuses and then defocuses into the multi-rings structure. Then, these multi-rings perform the outward accelerations during the propagation. That means the CSAB has the inverse propagation of the abruptly autofocusing Airy beam. Besides, the propagation features of the circular symmetric Airy vortex beam (CSAVB) also have been investigated in detail. Our results offer a complementary tool with respect to the abruptly autofocusing Airy beam for practical applications.