Sb. Liu et al., Three-dimensional optical trajectory tracing and energy deposition of a laser beam in a laser-driven fusion - art. no. 036703, PHYS REV E, 6303(3), 2001, pp. 6703
A convenient method of three-dimensional ray tracing is suggested in the ge
ometrical optical approximation, in which the laser ray propagation is comp
letely based on the concept of optical trajectory tracing rather than depen
ding upon the effective force and propagation time. This tracing has two ob
vious advantages that the direct application of Snell's law can be avoided
when a ray crosses a different density zone and that to any desired accurac
y it takes much less computation time than existing tracing. For Gaussian l
ight beam propagation, in a spherically symmetric plasma atmosphere, the re
sults emphasize that the deposition uniformity is strongly dependent not on
ly on the wavelength of the laser but also on the temperature of the plasma
.