We propose the stronger optical guiding of an electromagnetic beam in a plasma by considering the amplitude
modulation of the fundamental beam. With the advent of high power source of electromagnetic radiation, the
electron velocity in a plasma may become quite large (comparable to the light velocity in free space). Thus, the
effect of relativistic mass variation must be taken into account. The relativistic effect of the laser propagation in a
plasma leads to self-focusing because of the dielectric constant of a plasma being an increasing function of the
intensity. The ponderomotive force of the laser beam pushes the electrons out of the region of high intensity, which
reduces the local electron density and increases the plasma dielectric function further, leading to even more selffocusing
of the laser. In this work, we consider a short pulse laser of finite spot size as an amplitude modulation in
time. Our findings show an efficient optical guiding mechanism based on amplitude modulation signal propagation
in plasmas. Medium nonlinearity becomes stronger if an amplitude modulated beam is introduced, which contributes
significantly in laser guiding in plasmas. Furthermore, the rate of laser self-focusing is increased with modulation
index due the fact of stronger Kerr effect. The study related to amplitude modulated optical signal may be useful for
communication technology.
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