Temporal and spectral properties of ultrashort pulsed Laguerre-Gaussian beams in dispersive media

The temporal and spectral properties of ultrashort pulsed Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) beams propagating in dispersive media are studied both theoretically and numerically. It is shown that the on-axis pulse broadens with increasing propagation distance and the on-axis spectrum is blueshifted. For the off-axis spectrum the blueshifts decrease and then the spectrum becomes redshifted as the radial distance increases. The propagation of ultrashort pulsed LG beams in free space and of ultrashort pulsed Gaussian beams can be regarded as special cases of our results, and some interesting properties are discussed. (c) 2006 Elsevier GrnbH. All rights reserved.