Simple spectral method for solving propagation problems in cylindrical geometry with fast Fourier transforms.

We describe a spectral method for solving the paraxial wave equation in cylindrical geometry that is based on expansion of the exponential evolution operator in a Taylor series and use of fast Fourier transforms to evaluate derivatives. A fourth-order expansion gives excellent agreement with a two-transverse-dimensional split-operator calculation at a fraction of the cost in computation time per z step and at a considerable savings in storage.