Radially and azimuthally polarized non-diffracting Airy vector beams and their particle-like topologies

A novel type of radially and azimuthally polarized Airy vector beams is introduced, numerically investigated and experimentally verified. Airy-type beams belong to the family of non-diffracting optical beams. Such light beams can propagate and reconstruct their intensity profile even after obstructions in their way. The analytical description of vector beams having non-uniform radial- and azimuthal- like polarization distributions and exhibiting properties as singularities in their phase and dark spots in the intensity. Additional topological structures are observed and the Skyrmionic density of polarization and topology of the Stokes field is investigated numerically and experimentally. The experimental setup for the generation of Airy-like beams contains in-volume inscribed geometrical phase elements for the Airy phase mask and a radial polarization converter.