V Self Focusing of Laser Beams in Plasmas and Semiconductors

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses a unified treatment of self focusing in plasmas and semiconductors; the emphasis is on the derivation and discussion of the field dependent dielectric constant on the basis of phenomenological and kinetic models of carrier transport and on the parabolic equation approach. With the availability of high power laser beams, a large number of interesting nonlinear phenomena is studied, both theoretically and experimentally. The phenomenon of self focusing occupies a unique place in nonlinear optics because it considerably influences all other nonlinear phenomena. The self focusing of laser beams in dielectrics has been extensively studied. The self focusing of laser beams in plasmas has recently attracted a great deal of attention on account of its applicability to controlled fusion. The instabilities of nonlinear origin in the plasma are enhanced by the enhancement of the intensity of the beam due to self focusing.