Experiments have been performed evidencing significant stimulated Raman sidescattering (SRS) at large angles from the density gradient. This was achieved in long scale-length high-temperature plasmas in which two beams couple to the same scattered electromagnetic wave further demonstrating for the first time this multiple-beam collective SRS interaction. The collective nature of the coupling and the amplification at large angles from the density gradient increase the global SRS losses and produce light scattered in novel directions out of the planes of incidence of the beams. These findings obtained in plasmas conditions relevant of inertial confinement fusion experiments similarly apply to the more complex geometry of these experiments where anomalously large levels of SRS were measured.

This paper presents an analysis of laser-plasma interaction risks of the shock ignition (SI) scheme and experimental results under conditions relevant to the corona of a compressed target. Experiments are performed on the LIL facility at the 10 kJ level, on the LULI 2000 facility with two beams at the kJ level and on the LULI 6-beam facility with 100 J in each beam. Different aspects of the interaction of the SI pulse are studied exploiting either the flexibility of the LULI 6-beam facility to produce a very high intensity pulse or the high energy of the LIL to produce long and hot plasmas. A continuity is found allowing us to draw some conclusions regarding the coupling quality and efficiency of the SI spike pulse. It is shown that the propagation of the SI beams in the underdense plasma present in the corona of inertial confinement fusion targets could strongly modify the initial spot size of the beam through filamentation. Detailed experimental studies of the growth and saturation of backscattering instabilities in these plasmas indicate that significant levels of stimulated scattering reflectivities (larger than 40%) may be reached at least for some time during the SI pulse.

Equivalent stimulated Brillouin backscattering (SBS) saturation levels have been measured in the interaction with 0.527 and 0.351 microm laser beams demonstrating that the initial interaction wavelength is not influencing the final saturation levels. Experiments have been performed at the two wavelengths in similar interaction conditions obtained by preforming the plasma from a solid target with a creation beam converted at the same wavelength as the interaction beam. This produces an almost exponential density profile from vacuum to the critical density of the interaction beam in which large SBS gains are reached.

We have designed experiments to study the effect of the laser wavelength (0.527 versus 0.351 lm) on the coupling efficiency in plasma conditions relevant to compression and shock ignition (SI) schemes in different intensity regimes. A difficult issue was to produce interaction conditions that are equivalent for the two wavelengths. This was obtained by using plasma preformed from a solid target with a plasma-preforming beam at the same wavelength as the interaction beam. This produced an almost exponential density profile from vacuum to the critical density of the interaction beam in which all interaction mechanisms are taken into account. The growth and saturation of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) have been measured at the two wavelengths, in backward as well as in near-backward directions. We have found that the SBS intensity threshold is $1.5 times higher at 3x than at 2x in agreement with the Ik dependence of the SBS gain. The SBS behaviour is very well reproduced by the linear calculations of the postprocessor PIRANAH, giving us confidence that we have a good control of the relevance of the experimental conditions for the study of the laser wavelength effect on laser-plasma coupling. When SBS reaches the saturation regime, same levels of reflectivity are measured at 2 and 3x. Numerical simulations were performed with the paraxial code HERA to study the contribution of the fluid mechanisms in the saturation of SBS, showing that pump depletion and interplay with filamentation are likely to be the most important processes in SBS saturation for these conditions. This scenario also applies to the SBS of shock ignition high-intensity beams.

This Letter reports new experimental results that evidence the transition between the absolute and convective growth of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). Significant reflectivities were observed only when the instability grows in the absolute regime. In this case, saturation processes efficiently limit the SRS reflectivity that is shown to scale linearly with the laser intensity, and the electron density and temperature. Such a scaling agrees with the one established by T. Kolber et al. [Phys. Fluids B 5, 138 (1993)10.1063/1.860861] and B Bezzerides et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 2569 (1993)10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.2569], from numerical simulations where the Raman saturation is due to the coupling of electron plasma waves with ion waves dynamics.

The indirect-drive scheme to inertial confinement fusion uses a large number of laser beams arranged in a symmetric angular distribution. Collective laser plasma instabilities can therefore develop that couple all the incident laser waves located in a cone to the daughter wave growing along the cone symmetry axis [D. F. DuBois et al., Phys. Fluids B 4, 241 (1992)]. With complementary diagnostics of Thomson scattering and of the scattered light, we demonstrate the occurrence of collective stimulated Brillouin sidescattering driving collective acoustic waves in indirect-drive experiments.

Short pulse laser plasma interaction experiments using diffraction limited beams provide an excellent platform to investigate the fundamental physics of stimulated Raman scattering. Detailed understanding of these laser plasma instabilities impacts the current inertial confinement fusion ignition designs and could potentially impact fast ignition when higher energy lasers are used with longer pulse durations (.1 kJ and .1 ps). Using short laser pulses, experiments can be modeled over the entire interaction time of the laser using particle-in-cell codes to validate our understanding quantitatively. Experiments have been conducted at the Trident laser facility and the Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (LULI) to investigate stimulated Raman scattering near the threshold of the instability using 527 nm and 1059 nm laser light, respectively, with 1.5-3.0 ps pulses. In both experiments, the interaction beam was focused into pre-ionized helium gas-jet plasma. Measurements of the reflectivity as a function of intensity and kl D were completed at the Trident laser facility, where k is the electron plasma wave number and l D is the plasma Debye length. At LULI, a 300 fs Thomson scattering probe is used to directly measure the density fluctuations of the driven electron plasma and ion acoustic waves. Work is currently underway comparing the results of the experiments with simulations using the VPIC particle-in-cell code. Details of the experimental results are presented in this manuscript.

Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion