Needle beams: a review

Abstract

Needle beams are highly attractive for applications which take advantage from a spatial and temporal localization of photons. High intensities, high resolution and extended depth of focus lead to fundamental advances in the optical system performance. Ultrashort, fringe-free, self-reconstructing nondiffracting pulses with undistorted temporal transfer are obtained by generating truncated Bessel beams under self-apodization conditions. Nondiffracting Talbot self-imaging of needle beam arrays enables to transfer near field information to the Fraunhofer zone. With addressable arrays of needle beams, reconfigurable time-wavefront sensors are built up. Moreover, spatial light modulators and flexible axicons are used to realize structured, highly localized wavepackets, accelerating beams and nondiffracting images.