Structured light pulses and their Lorentz-invariant mass

Abstract

Lorentz-invariant mass and mean propagation velocity have been found for structured light pulses in vacuum considered as relativistic objects. We solved the boundary problem for such widely known field configurations as Gauss, Laguerre-Gauss, Bessel-Gauss, Hermite-Gauss, and Airy-Gauss ones. The pulses were taken having the finite duration temporal envelope. We discovered that Lorentz-invariant mass and mean propagation velocity significantly depend on the spatial-temporal structure of pulses. We found that mean propagation velocity is independent of the full energy of the pulse and is smaller than the speed of light.