Spatially induced spatiotemporally nonspreading Airy-Bessel wave packets

By studying the effect of spatially induced group velocity dispersion (SIGVD) during the propagation of ultrashort pulsed Bessel beams in free space, we numerically prove that third-order SIGVD can temporally cause Gaussian distribution of pulsed Bessel beams to gradually evolve as unsymmetrical trailing oscillatory structures. The pulse shape is confirmed to be temporal Airy distributions on the basis of the cross-correlation function. Therefore, it is demonstrated that the scheme of generating spatiotemporally nonspreading Airy-Bessel wave packets in free space is possible by using a precompensating second-order SIGVD. The results of numerical simulation show that the quasi-Airy pulses induced by third-order SIGVD are temporally nonspreading during propagation in dispersive media. The reasons for nonspreading of such Airy distribution pulses are phenomenologically analyzed by a time-frequency Wigner distribution function of the pulse. (c) 2012 Optical Society of America