Experimental observation of Tornado Waves

Tornado waves (ToWs) [1] were recently introduced theoretically as a new type of structured light that twists and accelerate both over the radial and the angular dimensions. Tornado waves are comprised by superimposing cylindrically symmetric accelerating beams [2] , [3] , often referred as circular Airy beams (CAB) or ring-Airy beams that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM) of opposite helicity [4] , [5] . In this work we report on the experimental observation of Tornado Waves and demonstrate their unique spatio-angular acceleration property. To generate such waves we used a single phase modulation device (SLM) and applied spatial multiplexing techniques to generate superimposing accelerating waves carrying OAM of opposite handedness [1] . For each of the superimposed fields a phase mask was designed following an approach similar to [6] , [7] .