Relativistic interaction of rippled laser beams with plasmas
Year: 2000
Authors: Asthana M.V., Giulietti A., Giulietti D., Gizzi L.A., Sodha M.S.
Autors Affiliation: CNR, Area Ricerca, Inst Fis Atom & Mol, I-56010 Pisa, Italy
Abstract: An investigation of the growth of a radially symmetrical ripple, superimposed on a Gaussian laser beam in a plasma is presented. Based on WKB and paraxial ray approximation the phenomenon of relativistic self-focusing (RSF) is analytically investigated. The differential equation for beamwidth parameter of rippled laser beam is evaluated. The ripple gets focused when the initial power of the ripple is greater than the critical power for focusing. The focusing is found to be considerably affected by the power of the main beam and the phase angle between the electric vectors of the main beam and the ripple. At higher intensities the saturation effects of nonlinearity become predominant, making the nonlinear refractive index in the paraxial region have slower radial dependence, and thus the ripple extract relatively less energy from its neighborhood. The case of magnetized plasmas is also preliminarily discussed.
Journal/Review: LASER AND PARTICLE BEAMS
Volume: 18 (3) Pages from: 399 to: 403
KeyWords: laser plasmaDOI: 10.1017/S0263034600183077ImpactFactor: 0.651Citations: 12data from “WEB OF SCIENCE” (of Thomson Reuters) are update at: 2024-12-08References taken from IsiWeb of Knowledge: (subscribers only)Connecting to view paper tab on IsiWeb: Click hereConnecting to view citations from IsiWeb: Click here