Transient thermal blooming of single and multiple short laser pulses

Energy transfer through absorbing media with pulses short compared to the acoustic transit time has been investigated experimentally and theoretically for collimated beams in a homogeneous wind field. Two experimental approaches were used: a low intensity cw CO(2) laser probe beam technique giving a continuous record of the lensing of the medium following the transmission of a coaxial high power TEA laser pulse and a direct determination of high power pulse train blooming using a thermofax covered drum. The experimental results support the predictions of a geometric optics perturbation solution as well as those of existing propagation codes. An interesting case, namely, enhancement resulting in a 20-30% increase of the original nonbloomed peak intensity is observed when the pulse separation time is approximately 1-2 times the wind flow time across the beam.