Abstrato

Filamentation of a Uniform Laser Beam Propagating in a Homogeneous Collisional Plasma Including the Effect of Thermal Conduction

Ghanshyam

In this paper we have studied the filamentation of laser beams in plasmas where both collisional and thermalconduction losses are present simultaneously. A uniform intensity laser beam propagating through collisional plasma is unstable to transverse perturbations, and breaks up into filaments. An optimum value of q⊥ of the perturbation is required for a maximum growth rate. A uniform plane wave does not cause redistribution of the carriers. However, as a result of perturbation in the intensity distribution along the wave, electrons do become redistributed. It is noted that the spatial growth rate is a monotonically increasing and saturating function of the incident intensity of the beam.