Dihedral beams

Abstract In this work, a group theory-based formulation that introduces new classes of dihedral-symmetric beams is presented. Our framework leverages the algebraic properties of the dihedral group of rotations and reflections to transform input beams into closed-form families of dihedral-invariant wavefields, which will be referred to as dihedral beams. Each transformation is associated with a specific dihedral group in such a way that each family of dihedral beams exhibits the symmetries of its corresponding group. Our approach is inspired by one of the outcomes of this work: elegant Hermite–Gauss beams can be described as a dihedral interference pattern of elegant traveling waves, a new set of solutions to the paraxial equation also developed in this paper. Particularly, when taking elegant traveling waves as input beams, they transform into elegant dihedral beams possessing quasi-crystalline properties and including features like phase singularities, self-healing, and pseudo-nondiffracting propagation, as well as containing elegant Hermite and Laguerre–Gauss beams as special cases. Our approach can be applied to arbitrary scalar and vector input beams and constitutes a general group-theory formulation that can be extended beyond the dihedral group.