Abstract
An intense ultrafast laser pulse propagating through a plasma undergoes self-focusing and self-phase-modulation as a result of relativistic mass nonlinearity. The inclusion of a quartic term in the expansion of the eikonal in the radial coordinate r allows the modification of the shape of the radial intensity profile. The front of the pulse, under the combined effects of time-dependent self-focusing and frequency downshifting, acquires a severely distorted temporal shape. The radial profile for where I is the axial laser intensity and is the laser wavelength in micrometers, is transformed from a Gaussian to a super-Gaussian because of the faster convergence of the marginal rays than the paraxial rays. In the opposite case of when nonlinear plasma permittivity approaches saturation, the radial profile in the axial region becomes broader than the Gaussian.
© 2001 Optical Society of America
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