G. Rodriguez-Morales, S. Chavez-Cerda
Abstract
It is shown that three-dimensional nonparaxial beams are described by the oblate spheroidal exact solutions of the Helmholtz equation. For the first time, their beam behaviour is investigated and their corresponding parameters are defined. Using the fact that the beam width of the family of paraxial Gaussian beams is described by an hyperbola, the connection between the physical parameters of nonparaxial spheroidal beam solutions and those of paraxial beams is formally stablished. These results are also helpful to investigate the exact vector nonparaxial beams.