REVIEW OF NONDIFFRACTING BESSEL BEAM EXPERIMENTS

The theory of non-diffracting Bessel beam propagation and the experimental evidence for nearly-non-diffracting Bessel beam propagation are reviewed. The experimental results are analysed to show that the observed propagation distances are characteristic of the optical systems used to transport the beams, and are not unique to the Bessel beam intensity profiles. The results indicate that, despite the innovative techniques employed to generate finite radius Bessel beam distributions, nearly-non-diffracting Bessel beam propagation has not yet been conclusively demonstrated.