Investigation of Langdon effect on the stimulated backward Raman and Brillouin scattering

TL;DR

This paper systematically studies how the Langdon effect, which alters electron energy distributions to super-Gaussian forms, influences stimulated backward Raman and Brillouin scattering in plasma, with implications for inertial confinement fusion.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the Langdon effect's impact on SBS across different ion species and establishes a parameter boundary for its influence on SBS growth rates.

Findings

Langdon effect alters growth rates of SRS and SBS.

Super-Gaussian EEDF can enhance SBS in certain plasmas.

Parameter boundary for SBS growth rate variation is identified.

Abstract

In a laser-irradiated plasma, the Langdon effect makes the electron energy distribution function (EEDF) tend to a super-Gaussian distribution, which has important influences on laser plasma instabilities. In this work, the influences of a super-Gaussian EEDF on the convective stimulated backward Raman scattering (SRS) and stimulated backward Brillouin scattering (SBS) are studied systematically for a wide range of typical plasma parameters in the inertial confinement fusion (ICF). Distinct behaviors are found for SRS and SBS in the variation trend of the peak spatial growth rate and the corresponding wavelength of the scattered light. Especially, the Langdon effect on the SBS in plasmas with different ion species and isotopes is analyzed in detail, and the parameter boundary for judging the variation trend of the peak spatial growth rate of SBS with the superGaussian exponent is presented for the first time. In certain plasma parameter region, it is found that the Langdon effect could enhance SBS in mixed plasma, which may attenuate the improvement in suppressing SBS by mixing low-Z ions into the high-Z plasma. These comprehension of Langdon effect on LPIs would contribute to a better understanding of SRS and SBS in experiments.