Significance   The random fluctuations of atmosphere cause turbulence effects, such as beam distortion, expansion, drift, and scintillation. Turbulence poses a serious problem for beam propagation in space, limiting the use of optical systems. Atmospheric turbulence suppression has become a problem that must be solved in technical fields such as astronomical imaging, laser atmospheric transmission, and space-atmosphere laser communication. Generally, the main suppression methods mainly include adaptive optics technology, signal processing technology, and non-diffracting beam transmission technology, which have problems such as complex systems or unsatisfactory effects. Finding a simple, effective, stabilizing transmission technique that allows the beam to suppress turbulence is important for scientific research.

  Progress   In recent years, a special beam called optical pin beam has been proposed and used to suppress atmospheric turbulence, which has received widespread attention in the academic community. The optical pin beam, which belongs to a special type of non-diffracting beam, is synthesized from multiple radially symmetric Airy beams. It has the characteristic of self-focusing during transmission. Before reaching the focal point, the transverse wave vectors cancel each other out, and the spot at the focal point is minimized. After passing through the focal point, it degenerates into a Bessel-like beam and continues to propagate forward. Compared to ordinary beams, optical pin beams have more concentrated beam energy and smaller spot energy when transmitted through turbulent environments. With the depth study of the optical pin beam, in order to adapt to various complex application environments, its derived pin-like optical vortex beams and steady optical beams have also been found to have extremely high research value. After turbulence transmission of the same intensity, the pin-like optical vortex beam has improved its center of mass shift and jitter by more than 50% compared to the LG vortex beam. The beam parameter product of the steady optical beam within a transmission distance range of 20 mm is only 49.40% of that of the Gaussian beam. The optical pin beam has been proven to suppress atmospheric turbulence effectively and achieve stable long-distance transmission. The use of optical pin beams for atmospheric transmission has a simple system structure, low cost, and high real-time suppression of turbulence with good results.

  Conclusions and Prospects   The optical pin beam can resist turbulence transmission and exhibits self-focusing transmission properties in turbulent environments, which are more stable than those of Gaussian beams, and the spot energy is more concentrated than that of conventional Gaussian beams. Its excellent properties are expected to play a more important role in turbulence suppression studies. Its derived beams such as pin-like optical vortex beams and steady optical beams also show better performance in anti-turbulence transmission, and are expected to be applied more in fields such as laser communication and imaging. In scenarios where complex adaptive optics systems cannot be applied, the use of optical pin beams for correction of aberrant wavefront is a great turbulence suppression technique. Therefore, it is of great theoretical and practical application value to carry out research on the transmission characteristics of optical pin beams and their derived beams, and their applications in the fields of laser atmospheric transmission and atmospheric laser communication.