title: Sending femtosecond pulses in circles: highly nonparaxial accelerating beams.
abstract: We use caustic beam shaping on 100 fs pulses to experimentally generate nonparaxial accelerating beams along a 60° circular arc, moving laterally by 14 µm over a 28 µm propagation length. This is the highest degree of transverse acceleration reported to our knowledge. Using diffraction integral theory and numerical beam propagation simulations, we show that circular acceleration trajectories represent a unique class of nonparaxial diffraction-free beam profile which also preserves the femtosecond temporal structure in the vicinity of the caustic.
authors.affiliation: Département d’Optique PM Duffieux, Institut FEMTO-ST, UMR 6174 CNRS Université de Franche-Comté, Besancon, France. francois.courvoisier@femto‑st.fr
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Courvoisier
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mathis
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Froehly
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Giust
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Furfaro
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Lacourt
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jacquot
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Dudley