A geometric optics method for high-frequency electromagnetic fields computations near fold caustics. II: The energy (Q1877128)

The paper presents an Eulerian numerical method for the simulation of the propagation of a laser wave in a material medium. The authors provide the computation of the amplitudes needed to evaluate the energy deposited by the laser wave in a plasma when a fold caustic forms. This paper is entirely in the scheme of geometric optics. They compute the caustic location, the phases associated to the two ray branches on its illuminated side and the amplitudes needed to evaluate the energy. They propose a new scheme which remains of order 1 at the caustic and present a partial theoretical analysis of the problem as well as a numerical validation. They also test the capability of their Eulerian geometric algorithm to produce a numerical solution of the Helmholtz equation and attempt to check their frequency asymptotic accuracy. For Part I, cf. ibid. 156, No. 1, 93--125 (2003; Zbl 1027.78011).