Fog hole boring with pulsed high-energy lasers: an exact solution including scattering and absorption

The exact time dependent solution for hole boring through fog is obtained for pulsed high energy lasers, which includes scattering, absorption, and the effect of realistic particle distributions. The results are applied to both haze burnout and fog hole boring. For the latter, at 10.6 microm, the calculated result is that 50% more laser pulse energy is required than that calculated from thermodynamic considerations alone. An absolute upper bound of 100% is also established. The results are compared to shorter wavelengths, e.g., 3.8 microm for which much larger fluences are required to evaporate fog or haze, and are also compared to other recent approximate results, which overestimate the required energy by a larger factor.