Speaker
Description
It has only recently become possible to experimentally test our understanding of laser-plasma interaction processes in fusion scale plasmas relevant to directly-driven and indirectly-driven inertial confinement fusion. It is seen that seeded stimulated Brillouin scattering and Raman side-scatter are particularly important processes and pose significant constraints on allowable peak laser powers. Examples will be shown from recent experiments on the National Ignition Facility to support these conclusions. It is suggested that successful fusion schemes will require such instabilities to be mitigated. Two approaches to mitigation will be described: mitigation by the introduction of enhanced laser bandwidth, and the use of structured light beams (e.g., light carrying orbital angular momentum). Simulation results will be presented that show the potential effectiveness of each scheme as will proposals for experimental verification on MJ-class laser facilities.
