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Updated: Aug 15, 2026

Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Braiding of two spiraling laser beams due to plasma wave wakes
1Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1547, USA.
Abstract:
We study how two Gaussian laser beams interact through plasma wave wakes produced when they co-propagate in a plasma. Using a variational principle, we derive equations of motion for the centroid of each beam, and find braided centroid solutions. These results can be generalized to other nonlinear optical media with non-instantaneous nonlinearity.
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