Radially self-accelerating optical pulses

Abstract

We generalize the concept of radially self-accelerating beams to the domain of optical pulses. In particular, we show how radially self-accelerating optical pulses (RSAPs) can be constructed by suitable superpositions of X-waves, which are a natural extension of Bessel beams in the pulsed domain. Moreover, we show that while field-rotating RSAPs preserve their self-acceleration character, intensity-rotating RSAPs only possess pseudo-self-acceleration, as their transverse intensity distribution is deformed during propagation due to their propagation-dependent angular velocity.