Study of instabilities in long scale-length plasmas with and without laser-beam-smoothing techniques

Abstract

Experimental results are presented for the interaction of an intense laser beam in large preformed, homogeneous underdense plasmas. Parametric instabilities, including filamentation, stimulated Raman (SRS) and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS), have been extensively studied. In this paper comparisons are made between coherent and smoothed laser interaction beams for their effectiveness in suppressing these instabilities. Direct observations of the enhanced breakup of the coherent interaction beam due to filamentation are presented. Measurements of the transverse scale lengths of the hot spots, and the level of the intensity modulations of the filamentary structures are given. Further, direct experimental observations of SRS and SBS generated in filaments are presented. These provided conclusive evidence that this instability provides the primary mechanism for the generation of SRS and SBS under such plasma conditions. With the smoothed laser interaction beams, using random phase plates (RPP) and induced spatial incoherence (ISI), the level of filamention was significantly reduced. The backscattered fractions of SRS and SBS with respect to the irradiance of the interaction beam were measured for coherent, RPP and ISI. Reduction of typically a factor of 20 and 500 were recorded using RPP and ISI, respectively, in the backscattering levels of SRS and SBS when compared with the coherent interaction beam. The reductions are attributed primarily to the effectiveness of the beam-smoothing techniques in suppressing the filamentation instability.