Aberrationless approach for diffraction of pulses at linear interfaces

BONOMO, NÉSTOR; DEPINE, RICARDO

OPTICS COMMUNICATIONS

Elsevier Science

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2001 vol. 190 p. 19 - 27

0030-4018

The diffraction of temporally Gaussian shape light pulses is theoretically studied by means of the aberrationless approach, a thoretical technique previously used for spatially bounded beams of unlimited time extension and which is extended here to time domain. We consider linear inerfaces, that is, we assume that spectral components of the vector field in the diffracted pulse are linearly related with the spectral components of the vector field in the incident pulse. In our analysis pulse deformations are described in terms of the following effects: time delay, focal displacement, waist modification, and change in propagation velocity. Expressions for these effects, the time domain analogs of those already reported in the spatial domain, are given and compared with those obtained using the stationary phase method. The theory is used to calculate deformations of a short light pulse at a flat interface near conditions of total internal reflection.