Finite-energy, accelerating Bessel pulses

Abstract

Abstract:We numerically investigate the possibility to generate freely accelerating or decelerating pulses. In particular it is shown that acceleration along the propagation direction z may be obtained by a purely spatial modulation of an input Gaussian pulse in the form of finite-energy Bessel pulses with a cone angle that varies along the radial coordinate. We discuss simple practical implementations of such accelerating Bessel beams.

Direct spatiotemporal measurements of accelerating ultrashort Bessel-type light bullets

“…More recently, a type of laterally accelerating localized wave called an Airy beam (or pulse, if generated using ultrashort pulses), has attracted attention [9][10][11]. Pulses can also accelerate due to diffraction, spherical aberration in lenses, and appropriately shaped nonlinear profiles of axicons [12][13][14][15].…”

“…In this paper, we report spatiotemporal measurements of accelerating and decelerating Bessel pulses. The term was proposed in [15] where generation and properties of such pulses have been theoretically investigated. These pulses are similar to the localized waves known as Bessel-X pulses [2,3,[6][7][8], with the main difference being that they are generated by crossing and interfering focusing pulses that have curved pulse fronts and form part of a spindle torus surface, rather than the double conical surface that is present in Bessel-X pulses.…”

Directly recording diffraction phenomena in the time domain

“…Also similar to the Bessel-X pulse the boundary wave pulse has a letter X-like axial cross-section and propagates on the optical axis superluminally. But while the group velocity of the former has a constant value exceeding c, the central spot of the boundary wave pulse is decelerating (see also [1,[9][10][11]). The elementary boundary diffraction waves emanating from the edges of the aperture must travel a longer distance to reach the optical axis compared to the centre of the direct pulse and thus lag behind.…”

Manipulating nonlinear optical processes with accelerating light beams

“…The Airy beam solution has been the most extensively studied to date (see [1] for a review), while accelerating parabolic beams [2], Bessel pulses [3], and Airy-Bessel pulses [4] have also attracted recent interest. In addition, by interfering two light fields of different frequencies, a traveling intensity modulation component can be created [5].…”