Propagation Of High Power Laser Radiation In Partially Ionized Gases

When a laser beam of sufficiently high intensity interacts with a weakly ionized gas, the nonuniform deposition of laser energy into the electron gas causes heating of the electrons, ions, and neutral gas. Eventually, the neutral gas will 'break-down' and become more highly ionized. This ionization can seriously limit the amount of laser energy that can damage a target. A multifluid model has been devised to describe the many physical processes that occur when the high power laser wave interacts with the partially ionized gas. A flexible computer program has been developed to numerically integrate the multifluid plasma transport equations coupled with Maxwell's equations. The computer program is sufficiently general so as to be capable of describing target vaporization, with diffusion and ionization of target material into an ambient gas. In this report, only the modification of an ambient gas by the laser radiation is studied.