Nonlinear development of stimulated Raman scattering from electrostatic modes excited by self-consistent non-Maxwellian velocity distributions

The parametric coupling involving backward stimulated scattering of a laser and electron beam acoustic modes (BAM) is described as observed in particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The BAM modes evolve from Langmuir waves (LW) as the electron velocity distribution is nonlinearly modified to be non-Maxwellian by backward stimulated Raman scattering (BSRS). With a marginal damping rate, BAM can be easily excited and allow an extended chirping in frequency to occur as later SRS pulses encounter modified distributions. Coincident with the emergence of this non-Maxwellian distribution is a rapid increase in BSRS reflectivities with laser intensities. Both the reflectivity scaling with laser intensity and the observed spectral features from PIC simulations are consistent with recent Trident experiments.