Investigation of Weakly Relativistic Ponderomotive Effects on Self-Focusing During Interaction of High Power Elliptical Laser Beam with Plasma

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of weakly relativistic ponderomotive effects on self-focusing during interaction of high power elliptical laser beam with plasma. The nonlinear differential equations for the beam width parameters of elliptical laser beam have set up by using Wentzal–Krammers–Brillouin (WKB) and paraxial approximations. These equations have been solved numerically by using fourth order Runge–Kutta method to study the variation of these beam width parameters against normalized distance of propagation. Effects of variation in laser beam intensity, plasma density and electron temperature on the beam width parameters are also analyzed.