Abstract
Optical beams and pulses are electromagnetic waves concentrated in space and/or time; they have finite energy content and can be produced by optical sources such as lasers. The following discussion relates to the propagation of coherent beams and pulses that are characterized by completely controlled spatial and temporal phase.
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Notes
- 1.
In general, \(\mathbf{n}\) must also be a function of \(\mathbf{x}\) for Eq. (3.1) to be a solution of the Helmholtz equation; here, we neglect this fact and assume that \(\mathbf{n} \perp \mathbf{ k}\), so that Eq. (3.1) describes actually the transverse component of the field (which we assume to dominate). If one interprets Eq. (3.1) as vector potential, one obtains exact solutions for the fields (Haus 1984).
- 2.
See, e.g., Goodman (1996).
- 3.
This statement is, of course, only valid if the higher terms in Eq. (3.154) are negligible.
- 4.
- 5.
The FWHM duration of a \(\mathrm{sech}^{2}\left (\sqrt{2}\tau /\tau _{0}\right )\) pulse is given by \(\sqrt{2}\ln \left (1 + \sqrt{2}\right )\tau _{0}\) = 1. 247τ 0 for comparison, the FWHM duration of a Gaussian pulse is 1. 177τ 0.
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Reider, G.A. (2016). Optical Beams and Pulses. In: Photonics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26076-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26076-1_3
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