  Bendable light beams have recently seen tremendous applications in optical
manipulation, optical imaging, optical routing, micromachining, plasma
generation and nonlinear optics. By exploiting curved light beams instead of
traditional Gaussian beam for line-of-sight light communications, here we
propose and demonstrate the viability of free-space data-carrying bendable
light communications along arbitrary trajectories with multiple
functionalities. By employing 39.06-Gbit/s 32-ary quadrature amplitude
modulation (32-QAM) discrete multi-tone (DMT) signal, we demonstrate free-space
bendable light intensity modulated direct detection (IM-DD) communication
system under 3 different curved light paths. Moreover, we characterize multiple
functionalities of free-space bendable light communications, including bypass
obstructions transmission, self-healing transmission, self-broken trajectory
transmission, and movable multi-receiver transmission. The observed results
indicate that bendable light beams can make free-space optical communications
more flexible, more robust and more multifunctional. The demonstrations may
open a door to explore more special light beams enabling advanced free-space
light communications with enhanced flexibility, robustness and functionality.
