Generating attenuation-resistant frozen waves in absorbing fluid

We demonstrate a class of nondiffracting beams, called frozen waves, with a central spot that can be made to maintain a predefined intensity profile while propagating in an absorbing fluid. Frozen waves are composed of Bessel beams with different transverse and longitudinal wavenumbers, and are generated using a programmable spatial light modulator. The attenuation-resistant frozen waves demonstrated here address the problem of propagation losses in absorbing media. This development can be beneficial for many applications in particle micro-manipulation, data communications, remote sensing, and imaging.