Marginal phase correction of truncated Bessel beams

Approximate analytic expressions are obtained for evaluating the axial intensity and the central-lobe diameter of J0 Bessel beams transmitted through a finite-aperture phase filter. A reasonable quality factor governing the axial-intensity behavior of a phase-undistoried truncated Bessel beam is found to be the inverse square root of the Fresnel number defined, for a given aperture, from the axial point of geometrical shadow. Additional drastic reduction of axial-intensity oscillations is accomplished by using marginal phase correction of the beam instead of the well-known amplitude apodization. A procedure for analytically calculating an optimal monotonic slowly varying correction phase function is described. © 2000 Optical Society of America.