Abstract
Electronic parametric instabilities of an ultrarelativistic circularly polarized laser pulse propagating in underdense plasmas are studied by numerically solving the dispersion relation which includes the effect of the radiation reaction force in laser-driven plasma dynamics. Emphasis is placed on studying the different modes in the laser-plasma system and identifying the absolute and convective nature of the unstable modes in a parameter map spanned by the normalized laser vector potential and the plasma density. Implications for the ultraintense laser-plasma experiments are pointed out.
Highlights
Instabilities associated with short-pulse laser propagation in a plasma belong to the so-called parametric instabilities, and they are important for applications in the area of laser driven fusion, laser wakefield acceleration in plasmas, and for understanding the propagation of light in a medium with refractive index differing from unity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
We have numerically studied the effect of the radiation reaction force on the electronic parametric instabilities, focusing on the branches of the Raman-type instabilities
We find that the RR force significantly changes the nature of the Raman branches of the parametric instabilities
Summary
Instabilities associated with short-pulse laser propagation in a plasma belong to the so-called parametric instabilities, and they are important for applications in the area of laser driven fusion, laser wakefield acceleration in plasmas, and for understanding the propagation of light in a medium with refractive index differing from unity [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. In the regime of ultrarelativistic laser-plasma interaction, the role of radiation damping in the plasma dynamics becomes important too [16]. For a two-dimensional (2D) perturbation wave vector, an additional relativistic filamentation instability (RFI) becomes important Among these instabilities, SRS is of significant importance as it is responsible for the generation of hot electrons in fast ignition fusion [1,3], and strong plasma wakefield excitation in laser driven wakefield acceleration [7,11]. [16] and show that the RR force influences the properties of the unstable modes associated with the Raman and modulational instabilities, and changes the nature of the unstable perturbation in the ultrarelativistic regime of laser-plasma interaction.
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