Finite-energy, accelerating Bessel pulses

We numerically investigate the possibility to generate freely accelerating or decelerating pulses. In particular it is shown that acceleration along the propagation direction z may be obtained by a purely spatial modulation of an input Gaussian pulse in the form of finite-energy Bessel pulses with a cone angle that varies along the radial coordinate. We discuss simple practical implementations of such accelerating Bessel beams. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America