Bessel-Bessel laser bullets doing the twist

Abstract

Bessel beams carry orbital angular momentum (OAM). Opening up of the Hilbert space of OAM for information coding makes Bessel beams potential candidates for utility in data transfer and optical communication. A laser bullet is the ultra-short and tightly-focused analogue of a non-diffracting and non-dispersing laser Bessel beam. Here, we show fully analytically that a Bessel-Bessel laser bullet possesses orbital angular momentum. Analytic investigation of the energy, linear momentum, energy flux, and angular momentum, associated with the fields of a Bessel-Bessel bullet, in an under-dense plasma, is conducted. The expressions reported here will play a crucial role in preparing the laser bullets for practical applications, such as data transfer in optical communication, x- and gamma-ray generation from colliding bullets with counter-propagating electron bunches, particle trapping, tweezing and laser acceleration.