Statistical analysis of the sizes and velocities of laser hot spots of smoothed beams

Abstract

This paper presents a precise description of the characteristics of the hot spots of a partially coherent laser pulse. The average values of the sizes and velocities of the hot spots are computed, as well as the corresponding probability density functions. Applications to the speckle patterns generated by optical smoothing techniques for uniform irradiation in plasma physics are discussed. © 2001 American Institute of Physics.