Periodic abruptly autofocusing and autodefocusing behavior of circular Airy beams in parabolic optical potentials

In this paper, we investigate the propagation dynamics of circular Airy beams (CAB) in a medium with radial parabolic potential both analytically and numerically. Our results show that CAB will exhibit periodic abruptly autofocusing behavior under the action of radial parabolic potentials. Within every period, we interestingly observe a novel autodefocusing behavior, which manifests that optical peak intensity abruptly decreases by several orders of magnitude. In particular, such unique “autofocusing-to-autodefocusing” effect can lead to the formation of a series of elegant periodic optical bottles having paraboloidal shapes during the whole propagation process. Our findings indicate that CAB is expected to provide a unique tool in optical micromanipulation and optical trapping.