The propagation of a pulsed light beam through a medium containing absorbing aerosol droplets is considered. A previous analysis of the droplet temperature, including both vaporization and conductivity effects, is used to obtain for a monodisperse distribution of droplet radii the beam intensity and the droplet temperature along the path. For sufficiently long pulses, a vaporization front may be defined by the leading edge of the steady-state droplet temperature regime. The speed of the front is shown to vary for sufficiently large droplets approximately as the inverse fifth power of the droplet radius. Numerical calculations are given for the specific case of beam propagation through a medium containing absorbing water droplets.

© 1984 Optical Society of America

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