Laser beam self-focusing in turbulent dissipative media

A high-power laser beam propagating through a dielectric in the presence of fluctuations is subject to diffraction, dissipation, and optical Kerr nonlinearity. A method of moments was applied to a stochastic, nonlinear enveloped wave equation to analyze the evolution of the long-term spot radius. Fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inOptics letters Vol. 42; no. 2; p. 298
Main Authors Hafizi, B, Peñano, J R, Palastro, J P, Fischer, R P, DiComo, G
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 15.01.2017
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Summary:A high-power laser beam propagating through a dielectric in the presence of fluctuations is subject to diffraction, dissipation, and optical Kerr nonlinearity. A method of moments was applied to a stochastic, nonlinear enveloped wave equation to analyze the evolution of the long-term spot radius. For propagation in atmospheric turbulence described by a Kolmogorov-von Kármán spectral density, the analysis was benchmarked against field experiments in the low-power limit and compared with simulation results in the high-power regime. Dissipation reduced the effect of self-focusing and led to chromatic aberration.
ISSN:1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.42.000298