Mitigation of laser plasma filamentation by rotating beam smoothing scheme

Abstract

The propagation of intense laser beams in plasma inevitably gives rise to laser plasma instabilities, which have a significant impact on the illumination uniformity of the focused spot on the target in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) facilities. Here we propose an ultrafast smoothing scheme using a rotating beam (RB) to mitigate the laser plasma filamentation. Using the propagation model of the rotating beam in plasma for the laser-plasma self-focusing (SF) and filamentation, the filamentation characteristics of laser spots were analyzed. The results indicate that the rotating beam smoothing scheme, operating at picosecond timescale, exhibits superior mitigation effect of laser plasma filamentation.