Parabolic-accelerating vector waves

Complex vector light fields have become a topic of late due to their exotic features, such as their non-homogeneous transverse polarisation distributions and the non-separable coupling between their spatial and polarisation degrees of freedom (DoF). In general, vector beams propagate in free space along straight lines, being the Airy-vector vortex beams the only known exception. Here, we introduce a new family of vector beams that exhibit novel properties that have not been observed before, such as their ability to freely accelerate along parabolic trajectories. In addition, their transverse polarisation distribution only contains polarisation states oriented at exactly the same angle but with different ellipticity. We anticipate that these novel vector beams might not only find applications in fields such as optical manipulation, microscopy or laser material processing but also extend to others.

Excitation of Atomic Hydrogen by Proton Impact in the Presence of a Resonant Laser Field Using the First Order Magnus Approximation

We consider proton collisions from hydrogen atoms in the presence of a laser beam (taken in the electric dipole approximation) that resonantly (or nearly resonantly) excites the hydrogen atoms from the Is to the 2p state. The laser beam is linearly polarised with polarisation either parallel (longitudinal) or perpendicular (transverse) to the direction of incidence of the proton. A non-perturbative quasi-energy approach is used to describe the laser-atom interaction, while the first-order Magnus approximation is used to describe the collision dynamics in the presence of the nearly resonant laser beam. We have calculated the integrated cross section o-(2s} for the excitation of the 2s state. It is found that 0-(2s} is small for longitudinal polarisation, as compared with transverse polarisation. We have also compared our field-free results obtained by using the first-order Magnus approximation to that obtained by the close-coupling approximation. Although both methods give excellent results, the former method is quite demanding in terms of computer time.