Nondiffracting chirped Bessel waves in optical antiguides

Chirped Bessel waves are introduced as stable (nondiffracting) solutions of the paraxial wave equation in optical antiguides with a power-law radial variation in their index of refraction. Through numerical simulations, we investigate the propagation of apodized (finite-energy) versions of such waves, with or without vorticity, in antiguides with practical parameters. The new waves exhibit a remarkable resistance against the defocusing effect of the unstable index potentials, outperforming standard Gaussians with the same full width at half-maximum. The chirped profile persists even under conditions of eccentric launching or antiguide bending and is also capable of self-healing like standard diffraction-free beams in free space.