Propagation of highly aberrated laser beams in nonquadratic plasma waveguides

The propagation of a laser beam in a plasma column several meters long with a realistic electron density distribution is examined. The electron density distribution is based on laser-beam heating at z=0, but is otherwise uncoupled to the laser beam. The aberrated nature of the resulting lenslike medium leads to essentially aperiodic beam properties, which contrast with the completely periodic properties of Gaussian beams propagating in quadratic lenslike media. The beam is nonetheless stably trapped. These aberrated-beam properties also help to stabilize the beam against axial variations in refractive index