Generalizing higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams: analytical description and demonstration
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Updated: May 16, 2026

The Generation of Higher-order Laguerre-Gauss Optical Beams for High-precision Interferometry
Published on: August 12, 2013
Damian N Schimpf1, Jan Schulte, William P Putnam
1Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge MA 02139, USA. dschimpf@mit.edu
Abstract:
We report on a novel class of higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams in which the well-known Bessel-Gauss beam is the fundamental mode and the azimuthally symmetric Laguerre-Gaussian beams are special cases. We find these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams by superimposing decentered Hermite-Gaussian beams. We show analytically and experimentally that these higher-order Bessel-Gauss beams resemble higher-order eigenmodes of optical resonators consisting of aspheric mirrors. This work is relevant for the many applications of Bessel-Gauss beams in particular the more recently proposed high-intensity Bessel-Gauss enhancement cavities for strong-field physics applications.
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