Focusing of weak acoustic pulses

The process of focusing of acoustic pulses is investigated theoretically and experimentally. The analysis is carried out in the parabolic approximation. It is shown that the pulse profile at an arbitrary point of a Gaussian beam can be found using Green's function. The calculation of the acoustic field is performed for different focusing conditions. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental data. The proposed approach makes it possible to calculate pulse acoustic fields sufficiently accurately and take account of the effects of focusing and diffraction.