Lommel pulses: An analytic form for localized waves of the focus wave mode type with bandlimited spectrum

Abstract

A criticism of the focus wave mode (FWM) solution for localized pulses is that it contains backward propagating components that are difficult to generate in many practical situations. We describe a form of FWM where the strength of the backward propagating components is identically zero and derive special cases where the field can be written in an analytic form. In particular, a free-space version of "backward light" pulse is considered, which moves in the opposite direction with respect to all its spectral constituents. © 2008 Optical Society of America.