Effect of thermal blooming on pulse propagation through vaporizing aerosols.

The effect of thermal blooming in the air is formulated within the framework of the radiative transfer equation. This is accomplished on the basis of the ray optics approach and the notion of an effective time-dependent absorption coefficient that describes the changes in the phase of the electric field caused by thermal blooming. In this approach, the beam spreading effects are entirely due to scattering from the aerosol cloud; the effect of vaporization of aerosols leads to a nonlinear coupling of the aerosols to radiation. The general setup is used to model numerically the propagation of a high energy laser beam through a cloud of aerosols distributed in the atmosphere. The limitations of the approach are outlined.