Articles you may be interested inEffects of ion-ion collisions and inhomogeneity in two-dimensional kinetic ion simulations of stimulated Brillouin backscattering Phys. Plasmas 13, 022705 (2006); An analysis of the effects of ion trapping on ion acoustic waves excited by the stimulated Brillouin scattering of crossing intense laser beams is presented. Ion trapping alters the dispersion of ion acoustic waves by nonlinearly shifting the normal mode frequency and by reducing the ion Landau damping. This in turn can influence the energy transfer between two crossing laser beams in the presence of plasma flows such that stimulated Brillouin scattering ͑SBS͒ occurs. The same ion trapping physics can influence the saturation of SBS in other circumstances. A one-dimensional analytical model is presented along with reasonably successful comparisons of the theory to results from particle simulations and laboratory experiments. An analysis of the vulnerability of the National Ignition Facility Inertial Confinement Fusion point design ͓S. W. Haan et al., Fusion Sci. Technol. 41, 164 ͑2002͔͒ is also presented.