General description of transverse mode Bessel beams and construction of basis Bessel fields

Based on an analysis of polarized Bessel beams using the Hertz vector potentials and the angular spectrum representation (ASR), a general description of transverse mode Bessel beams is proposed. As opposed to the cases of linearly and circularly polarized Bessel beams, the magnetic and electric fields of a Bessel beam in a transverse mode are orthogonal to each other. Both sets of fields together form a complete set of basis Bessel fields, in terms of which an arbitrary Bessel beam can be regarded as a linear combination. The completeness of the basis Bessel fields is analyzed from the perspectives of waveguide theory and vector wave functions. Decompositions of linearly polarized, circularly polarized, and circularly symmetric n-order Bessel beams in terms of basis Bessel fields are given. The results presented in this paper provide a fresh perspective on the description of Bessel beams, which are useful in casting insights into the experimental generation of Bessel beams and the interpretation of light scattering related problems in practice. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.