Collaborative Research: Instability and transport of laser beam in plasma

Abstract

Our goal was to determine the onset of laser light scattering due to plasma wave instabilities. Such scatter is usually regarded as deleterious since laser beam strength is thereby diminished. While this kind of laser-plasma-instability (LPI) has long been understood for the case of coherent laser light, the theory of LPI onset for a laser beam with degraded coherence is recent. Such a laser beam fills plasma with a mottled intensity distribution, which has large fluctuations. The key question is: do the exceptionally large fluctuations control LPI onset or is it controlled by the relatively quiescent background laser intensity? We have answered this question. This is significant because LPI onset power in the former case is typically small compared to that of the latter. In addition, if large laser intensity fluctuations control LPI onset, then nonlinear effects become significant for less powerful laser beams than otherwise estimated.