Generalizing higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams: analytical description and demonstration

• DOI: 10.1364/oe.20.026852
• Publication Date: 2012-11-14T15:48:56Z
• Authors: Damian N. Schimpf; Jan Schulte; William P. Putnam; Franz X. Kärtner
• Keywords: Optics and Photonics; 0103 physical sciences; Humans; Scattering, Radiation; Computer Simulation; Acoustics; info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/530; Optics and Photonics: instrumentation; 01 natural sciences; Algorithms

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.