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Optical guiding of a laser beam in an axially nonuniform plasma channel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2010

Arvinder Singh  and
Navpreet Singh
Arvinder Singh*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India
Navpreet Singh
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Arvinder Singh, Department of Physics, National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, India. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The guiding of a laser beam in a plasma channel formed by a short laser prepulse is investigated. Due to the self defocusing of an ionizing short laser prepulse, the plasma channel formed is axially nonuniform. When a delayed second laser beam is allowed to propagate through such a preformed plasma channel, convergence and divergence of the beam is observed due to the relative competition of the refraction and diffraction phenomenon. We have solved the wave equation governing the propagation characteristics of an ionizing prepulse and a delayed pulse by the moment theory approach. Results have been compared with the paraxial ray model of Liu and Tripathi (1994). The moment theory predicts the propagation of guided laser beam over several Rayleigh lengths.

Keywords

Axially nonuniform plasmaPlasma channelRayleigh lengthSelf-focusing/defocusing
Type
Research Article
Information
Laser and Particle Beams , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , June 2010 , pp. 263 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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