ABSTRACT
Diffraction is one of the phenomena of the wave nature of light. When a light beam propagates along the optical axis from initial plane to observation plane, light fields from different points of the initial plane interfere with each other, so that in the observation plane the diffraction pattern occurs with its intensity distribution being generally different from the one in the initial plane. Distribution of complex amplitudes of such beams is described by the Pearcey function, defined as the integral of the complex exponential function with polynomial argument. Pearcey beams have an angular spectrum of plane waves with phase-only modulation along a parabola. When a light beam propagates along the optical axis from initial plane to observation plane, light fields from different points of the initial plane interfere with each other, so that in the observation plane the diffraction pattern occurs with its intensity distribution being generally different from the one in the initial plane.
