Bifurcating trajectory of non-diffractive electromagnetic Airy pulse

TL;DR

This paper derives an explicit expression for a spatial-temporal Airy pulse from Maxwell's equations, analyzes its bifurcating propagation trajectory, and identifies a critical point where pulse velocity becomes infinite and direction reverses.

Contribution

It provides a new analytical expression for Airy pulses and reveals a bifurcation phenomenon in their propagation dynamics.

Findings

Identified a bifurcation point in Airy pulse propagation.

At the bifurcation point, pulse velocity becomes infinite.

Pulse trajectory changes orientation at the bifurcation.

Abstract

The explicit expression for spatial-temporal Airy pulse is derived from the Maxwell's equations in paraxial approximation. The trajectory of the pulse in the time-space coordinates is analysed. The existence of a bifurcation point that separates regions with qualitatively different features of the pulse propagation is demonstrated. At this point the velocity of the pulse becomes infinite and the orientation of it changes to the opposite.