Numerical investigation of relativistic self-focusing of intense laser beam with LG01 mode in plasmas

In this paper, we numerically investigate the relativistic self-focusing of laser beam with LG₀₁ mode in plasmas. An effective potential is introduced to identify the critical power. Numerical methods are employed to solve the governing equations. To verify the numerical procedures, we compare the known analytical solution of the relativistic critical power for TEM₀₀ mode with our numerical method. It is shown that there is a good agreement between our numerical results and the analytical solution. The critical power for relativistic self-focusing of a LG₀₁ laser beam is about 6 times of that for a TEM₀₀ laser beam.