0.351 micron Laser Beam propagation in High-temperature Plasmas, 2007, December 21
Description:
A study of the laser-plasma interaction processes have been performed in plasmas that are created to emulate the plasma conditions in indirect drive inertial confinement fusion targets. The plasma emulator is produced in a gas-filled hohlraum; a blue 351-nm laser beam propagates along the axis of the hohlraum interacting with a high-temperature (T{sub e} = 3.5 keV), dense (n{sub e} = 5 x 10{sup 20}cm{sup -3}), long-scale length (L {approx} 2 mm) plasma. Experiments at these conditions have demonstrated that the interaction beam produces less than 1% total backscatter resulting in transmission greater than 90% for laser intensities less than I < 2 x 10{sup 15} W-cm{sup -2}. The bulk plasma conditions have been independently characterized using Thomson scattering where the peak electron temperatures are shown to scale with the hohlraum heater beam energy in the range from 2 keV to 3.5 keV. This feature has allowed us to determine the thresholds for both backscattering and filamentation instabilities; the former measured with absolutely calibrated full aperture backscatter and near backscatter diagnostics and the latter with a transmitted beam diagnostics. A plasma length scaling is also investigated extending our measurements to 4-mm long high-temperature plasmas. At intensities I < 5 x 10{sup 14} W-cm{sup -2}, greater than 80% of the energy in the laser is transmitted through a 5-mm long, high-temperature (T{sub e} > 2.5 keV) high-density (n{sub e} = 5 x 10{sup 20} w-cm{sup -3}) plasma. Comparing the experimental results with detailed gain calculations for the onset of significant laser scattering processes shows a stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold (R=10%) for a linear gain of 15; these high temperature, low density experiments produce plasma conditions comparable to those along the outer beams in ignition hohlraum designs. By increasing the gas fill density (n{sub e} = 10{sup 21} cm{sup -3}) in these …
Date:
December 10, 2007
Creator:
Froula, D.; Divol, L.; Meezan, N.; Ross, J.; Berger, R. L.; Michel, P. et al.
Partner:
UNT Libraries Government Documents Department