  Diffractionless propagation of optical beams through atomic vapors is
investigated. The atoms in the vapor are operated in a three-level Raman
configuration. A suitably chosen control beam couples to one of the
transitions, and thereby creates a spatially varying index of refraction
modulation in the warm atomic vapor for a probe beam which couples to the other
transition in the atoms. We show that a Laguerre-Gaussian control beam allows
to propagate single Gaussian probe field modes as well as multi-Gaussian modes
and non-Gaussian modes over macroscopic distances without diffraction. This
opens perspectives for the propagation of arbitrary images through warm atomic
vapors.
