Intense Laser Pulse Solitons in Plasmas

Abstract

In the previous chapter, we considered intense laser—plasma interactions under the conditions in which the major role is played by the effects related to laser beam transverse aperture evolution. Now we turn to the opposite limit, where the laser pulse aperture is large compared to the characteristic plasma wavelength. A number of studies are dedicated to the interactions of large aperture intense laser pulses with cold underdense plasmas. In particular, energy transfer from the laser pulse to plasma waves is studied in [106] in the framework of model (6.33)–(6.34).