Bessel-Gauss pulses

Abstract

A family of exact pulse solutions of the homogenous free-space scalar wave equation is obtained. These solutions describe moving modified Bessel-Gauss pulses. They include the fundamental Gaussian pulse and the Bessel beam solutions as special cases. The zeroth-order Bessel-Gauss pulse is shown to be more highly localized than the fundamental Gaussian solution because of its extra spectral degree of freedom. A superposition of Bessel-Gauss pulses is used to create a splash pulse that is more localized than the Ziolkowski splash pulse.