A unified modeling of wave mixing processes with the ray tracing method

Abstract

The stationary ray tracing method, commonly used in hydrodynamic codes to describe the laser propagation and energy deposition, is reformulated to include energy exchanges between laser beams, referred to as cross-beam energy transfer (CBET), as well as laser beam backscatterings from acoustic (Brillouin) and electron (Raman) plasma waves. These energy exchanges and scatterings are described by a Monte Carlo method simulating the creation/annihilation of rays. The algorithm has been validated against other numerical solvers and, in the case of CBET, by means of kinetic simulations. The method is efficient and can be easily implemented in already existing ray tracing packages used in many hydrodynamic codes. It can be further extended to describe other kinds of wave mixing processes such as side-scatterings and collective scatterings.