title: Ultrashort pulsed bessel beams and spatially induced group-velocity dispersion.
abstract: We find a new family of solutions of the nonparaxial wave equation that represents ultrashort pulsed light beam propagation in free space. The spatial and temporal parts of these pulsed beams are separable; the spatial transverse part is described by a Bessel function and remains unchanged during propagation, but the temporal profile can be arbitrary. Therefore the pulsed beam exhibits diffraction-free behavior with no transverse spreading, but the temporal part changes as if in a dispensive medium; the change is dominated by what we call spatially induced group-velocity dispersion. The analytical and numerical investigations show that the even- and odd-order spatially induced dispersions partially compensate for each other so as to give rise to pulse spreading, weakening, asymmetry, and center shift.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Light Transmission Optics, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. huwei@scnu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Guo