Thermally stimulated scattering in plasmas

Abstract

A theory for stimulated scattering of a laser beam is formulated where the dominant nonlinearity is the ohmic heating of the plasma. The analysis is carried out with particular reference to experimental investigations of CO2 laser heating of a linear discharge plasma. In the conditions characterizing this experiment local heat conduction is of little importance and the dynamic evolution for the electron temperature is dominated by heating and energy exchange with the ion component. These features are incorporated in the analysis. The resulting set of equations gives a growth rate and characteristic scale size for the filaments, which agrees well with the experimental results.