Improving Physical Optics Approximation through Bessel Beam Scattering

In this letter, the scattering of a nondiffractive Bessel beam (BB) incident field by a perfect electric conducting circular cylinder is investigated and compared with the standard scattering solution by a plane wave. It is proven that the BB incident field improves the validity of standard physical optics approximation and possibly extends its range of applicability to cylinders, or more general scatterers, whose curvature radius is not much larger than the operating wavelength. This offers new effective possibilities in the solutions of different electromagnetic scattering problems.