Measurement of the Dispersion of Thermal Ion-Acoustic Fluctuations in High-Temperature Laser Plasmas Using Multiple-Wavelength Thomson Scattering

Abstract

The dispersion of ion-acoustic fluctuations has been measured using a novel technique that employs multiple color Thomson-scattering diagnostics to measure the frequency spectrum for two separate thermal ion-acoustic fluctuations with significantly different wave vectors. The plasma fluctuations are shown to become dispersive with increasing electron temperature. We demonstrate that this technique allows a time resolved local measurement of electron density and temperature in inertial confinement fusion plasmas.