Impact of electron trapping on stimulated Raman scattering under incoherent broadband laser light in homogeneous plasma.

Abstract

Backward stimulated Raman scattering is a three-wave coupling instability requiring the matching of an incoming pump light wave to a scattered light wave and an electron plasma wave. It can be harmful to laser-driven inertial confinement fusion because of the reflection of a part of the incident laser flux and the generation of suprathermal electrons that preheat the fuel. It is believed that by increasing the laser bandwidth, one can suppress the excitation of Raman scattering and mitigate its detrimental effects. It is demonstrated in this paper that using a broad bandwidth laser has little effect on stimulated Raman scattering in the kinetic inflation regime where Landau damping dominates, as the additional bandwidth allows the electron plasma wave to match a wider range of laser frequencies. As a result, plasma wave saturation and Raman backscattering levels remain high even when the laser bandwidth is much larger than the effective instability growth rate.