Nondiffracting Accelerating Waves: Weber waves and parabolic momentum

TL;DR

This paper introduces Weber waves, a new class of nondiffracting, accelerating solutions to Maxwell's equations that follow parabolic trajectories and exhibit properties like self-healing and conserved parabolic momentum.

Contribution

The study presents Weber waves as a novel analytic class of nondiffracting, accelerating solutions with unique properties and broad implications across various wave systems.

Findings

Weber waves propagate along parabolic trajectories.

They are self-healing and can form breather waves.

Weber waves have a conserved quantity called parabolic momentum.

Abstract

Diffraction is one of the universal phenomena of physics, and a way to overcome it has always represented a challenge for physicists. In order to control diffraction, the study of structured waves has become decisive. Here, we present a specific class of nondiffracting spatially accelerating solutions of the Maxwell equations: the Weber waves. These nonparaxial waves propagate along parabolic trajectories while approximately preserving their shape. They are expressed in an analytic closed form and naturally separate in forward and backward propagation. We show that the Weber waves are self-healing, can form periodic breather waves and have a well-defined conserved quantity: the parabolic momentum. We find that our Weber waves for moderate to large values of the parabolic momenta can be described by a modulated Airy function. Because the Weber waves are exact time-harmonic solutions of the wave equation, they have implications for many linear wave systems in nature, ranging from acoustic, electromagnetic and elastic waves to surface waves in fluids and membranes.