On the Transition from Thermally-driven to Ponderomotively-driven Stimulated Brillouin Scattering and Filamentation of Light in Plasma
The dispersion properties of ion acoustic waves and their nonlinear coupling to light waves through ponderomotive and thermal forces are sensitive to the strength of electron-ion collisions. Here, we consider the growth rate of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) when the driven acoustic wave frequency and wavelength span the range of small to large compared to electron-ion collision frequency and mean free path respectively. We find in all cases the thermal contributions to the SBS growth rate are insignificant if the ion acoustic wave frequency is greater than the electron-ion collision frequency and the wavelength is much shorter than the electron-ion mean free path. On the other hand, the purely growing filamentation instability remains thermally driven for shorter wavelengths than SBS even when the growth rate is larger than the acoustic frequency.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH03073
- OSTI ID:
- 838510
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-4061; TRN: US0600140
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Stimulated brillouin scattering in a microwave-plasma experiment
Stimulated Brillouin side-scattering of the beat wave excited by two counter-propagating X-mode lasers in magnetized plasma