Combined effect of ponderomotive and relativistic self-focusing on laser beam propagation in a plasma

Abstract

Propagation of a Gaussian laser beam in a plasma is analyzed by including the nonlinearity associated with the relativistic mass and the ponderomotive force. We set up the nonlinear differential equation for beam width parameter using parabolic equation approach and solve it numerically. Our results show that the ponderomotive self-focusing contributes in the relativistic self-focusing of the laser beam. An impact of plasma electron temperature, relative density parameter, and intensity parameter on the propagation of the laser beam has been explored.