Possibility of self-focusing in the evaporation of a cloud medium by CO2 laser radiation

An investigation is made of the refraction dynamics in the evaporation of a cloud medium by high-intensity laser radiation. It is established that under diffusive evaporation conditions the heat liberation density decreases monotonically with rising radiation intensity. From this it follows that when laser beams with Gaussian intensity profiles are used, the interaction zone acquires focusing properties. The linear approximation is applied to study the dynamics and to estimate the scale of self-focusing.