title: Generalizing higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams: analytical description and demonstration.
abstract: We report on a novel class of higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams in which the well-known Bessel-Gauss beam is the fundamental mode and the azimuthally symmetric Laguerre-Gaussian beams are special cases. We find these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams by superimposing decentered Hermite-Gaussian beams. We show analytically and experimentally that these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams resemble higher-order eigenmodes of optical resonators consisting of aspheric mirrors. This work is relevant for the many applications of Bessel-Gauss beams in particular the more recently proposed high-intensity Bessel-Gauss enhancement cavities for strong-field physics applications.
authors.affiliation: Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA 02139, USA. dschimpf@mit.edu
authors.forename: Damian N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Schimpf
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schulte
authors.forename: William P
authors.initials: WP
authors.lastname: Putnam
authors.forename: Franz X
authors.initials: FX
authors.lastname: Kärtner
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation