Propagation of a light beam in an evaporating liquid-drop medium in the presence of wind refraction

An analysis is made of the self-consistent problem of a steady-state thermal self-interaction of a two-dimensional laser beam traveling in an evaporating (under the action of tie beam) liquid-drop medium in the presence of a homogeneous wind field. A nonlinear geometric-optics equation is obtained for the paths of rays in a beam with an arbitrary initial intensity distribution and an arbitrary initial divergence. The method of successive approximations is used to find the angles of nonlinear refraction of ray trajectories and of the radiation intensity profile in the medium. It is shown that a redistribution of the intensity in the light beam due to ray refraction results in considerable changes compared with a case when the refraction is ignored.