Airy wave packets and their application to automotive lighting

Contrary to common belief, light does not all the time propagate linearly. Hence it tends to bend when it takes the form of airy wave packets. This paper describes a first possible application of such wave packets to automotive lighting technology. After a first brief description of the historical background of the airy beams principle and their potential applications, a detailed analysis of these beams under potential-free Schrödinger equation with physical formulations is proposed. Considering that one of the most peculiar characteristic of airy waves is that they stay diffraction free when propagating, ‘diffraction’ and ‘diffraction-free propagation’ aspects and the physics behind it is then analyzed and described at the second step. In the third part of the paper, the characteristics of Bessel Beams, and their diffraction free behavior is explored and a comparison between Bessel beams and Airy beams is crosschecked. As Airy beams do accelerate during propagation, they describe a ballistic trajectory and bend. Up to now, these beams were mainly used to generate curved plasma channels in air and for particle separation in optical trapping applications. We investigate in our paper how the bending property of Airy beams could be used to achieve illumination in curved roads and corners in an automotive lighting application. Considering that so far, Airy beams were never thought to be a possible alternative to the current mechanical systems used to provide a “bending light” function, we describe how this could be achieved and what are the next steps to be investigated.