Anomalous interaction of intense light beams with dense plasmas

The interaction of a light wave with a plasma is analyzed by means of the Maxwell--Vlasov equations without collisions. A monochromatic, linearly polarized wave is incident on the surface of a cool, fully ionized plasma. The charged-particle density is above the cutoff value and varies along the direction of the electric vector of the wave. Numerical calculations for several versions of the problem are reported. The results show that if the energy flux density of the wave is above a certain threshold value the plasma will begin to absorb the light intensely. A nonlinear wave interaction which leads to multistreaming and which explains this absorption is studied.